Slayers: The Way
by mrthou
Summary: *ABANDONED* Lina Inverse. Sorcery genius, Dra-mata, enemy-of-all-who-live, etc. But who is she, really? Where did she learn what she knows? C&C welcome.
1. Book of Earth The 1st Chapter

**Slayers: The Way**  
A Slayers Fanfiction

By mrthou

Disclaimer: 

I didn't create Slayers, nor do I own any of it's characters. Fanfiction is a marginally legal activity which I choose to participate in anyway. If the owners or creators of Slayers tell me to stop writing this, I will.

Also, apologies to George Lucas, and the late Douglas Adams, whose works also greatly influenced this fanfiction.

This fanfic contains spoilers for the first two TV seasons of The Slayers.

**Book 1: Earth  
Chapter 1**  


* * *

* * *

Lina Inverse gazed warily across at her opponent, weapon poised to strike.

He was good, she had to admit. Almost as good as herself. Certainly, if she weren't careful, she could lose. What an unbearable thought that was! She needed a plan of attack.

The setting sun was at her back, hiding her features in shadow, and giving her hair an intimidating fiery cast. The landscape was bleak: where only hours before it had been heavily populated, now it was nearly barren, with only a few bones and pieces of broken ceramic scattered around in silent testament to its former habitation. The rich aroma of cooked flesh permeated the atmosphere, raising her fighting spirits.

Clash!

Quickly, she lashed out, only to have her weapon parried expertly by her opponent. There gazes locked momentarily, and then he struck.

She dipped her shoulder, allowing the sunlight to shine directly into his face. He slid to the left and blocked her counter-thrust.

Back and forth they battled, matching wills, weapons flashing in the dying light. Neither one could gain an advantage. The air around them was alive with the sometimes musical, sometimes rasping sounds of metal on metal. Lina briefly considered tossing off a few spells, but thought better of it. There were rules to this particular contest, after all. And besides, how could she prove her dominance if she cheated?

She started lobbing insults with her strikes, trying to distract him, but her opponent seemed unfazed. With an expression of serene calm, seeming to border almost on stupidity, he parried blow after blow, seeming to put little effort behind each precise movement.

Lina felt truly alive. This was what life was about: living for the moment, the contest, the doing, not the watching. Life, after all, was not a spectator's sport. With a rush of adrenalin, she powered forward, pushing her opponent momentarily off balance.

Before she could take advantage of the opening, he slipped under her guard and attacked. Frantically, Lina blocked, and quickly found herself on the defensive.

They disengaged, and backed away, panting from their exertions. _Damn it!_ Lina thought. _I'm not getting anywhere. All right, that's it. Kiddy gloves are off, now._ She raised her weapon and prepared to strike.

Suddenly, he launched himself forward, lashing out with a left handed strike. NO! Lina Inverse dove forward, deflecting the attack at the last possible second. With all her strength she slashed at her opponent's weapon.

Ching!  
  
Her opponent lost his grip, and his implement flipped up and away.

She looked smugly at him, and knocked his weapon out of the air, away from them. Ah, the thrill of victory. She smiled.

So did he.  
  
Uh oh. That wasn't right. Quickly, she glanced over to where his weapon had fallen, and saw... a spoon.

She looked down at the table, and saw his fork firmly embedded in the last sausage.

"Noooooooo!" she cried, collapsing to her chair. "I lost!"

"I win!" Gourry said happily. "Hey, Lina, what do you think of my new technique?"

Lina looked sorrowfully up at her protector, and said mournfully, "What?"

Gourry nodded once and smiled, "I call it, Way of the Fork!"

With surprising speed and power, Lina punched him in the face.

Then she took the last sausage.

"Lina-san, that wasn't very nice," Sylphiel admonished. She was sitting two tables away. She had seen Lina and Gourry eat before, after all, and knew better than to come between them and food. It could prove to be hazardous to her health. "Gourry-sama defeated you fairly. Don't you think he deserves the... reward?"

"He hasn't eaten it yet. It's fair game."

"Yes, but punching him wasn't in the rules."

"It wasn't _not_ in the rules either." Lina gestured over at Gourry. "Besides, he should've expected it."

Sylphiel just looked at her accusingly in response.

"Ahhrrg!" Lina said irritably. She waved her arms around theatrically. "What was I supposed to do? He stole my sausage!" 

"Lina-san..." Sylphiel said.

"I mean, I paid for it after all! And besides ..."

"Lina-san..." Sylphiel said again, this time a little more forcefully.

"... he can take it. Why don't you just ..."

"LINA-SAN!!!" Sylphiel shouted.

Lina blinked a few times. Did Sylphiel just shout at her? "But I..."

Sylphiel just looked at her.

"It's not..." Lina started. Sylphiel's glare silenced her again. "... but I want my food," she whined.

There was something about Sylphiel that really annoyed Lina. It wasn't the fact that she was constantly mooning over Gourry (at least that's what she told herself). It wasn't that she was almost useless in a fight. She wasn't even bothered by Sylphiel's rather strong moral code. After all, Amelia was just as bad, if not worse. But Amelia was rather easy to manipulate. The annoying thing was that Sylphiel was not. For someone who was so wishy-washy, she picked the oddest places to stand her ground. And once she stood, she didn't back down.

Lina sighed. For once, she didn't really feel like arguing. "Alright, fine." With that, she tossed the sausage at her unconscious guardian, into his open mouth. Reflexively, he chewed, swallowed, and smiled. Lina got up, and walked to the stairs.

"I'm going to bed," she announced. "Don't bother me." And she stomped up the stairs, to her room.

Lina was bored, that was the crux of the matter. She hadn't fried a bandit in over a week. She hadn't raided some ancient holy ruins in more than two. Sylphiel refused to engage in either activity on moral and ethical grounds, with surprising vehemence. And to make matters worse, Gourry had actually backed her up! How the hell was she supposed to get rich and famous if she couldn't smack around bad guys and go treasure hunting?

Lina sighed, and entered her room, closing the door behind her.

She couldn't even enjoy her battles with Gourry! It was just a game, couldn't Sylphiel see that? It kept their skills sharp, their minds and bodies active. Besides, it was fun! What was so wrong with that? It wasn't as if Gourry ever complained.

Lina opened the window and gazed out at the cloudless sky. Below her a stream babbled joyously, carrying leaves and grass and water bugs out toward the nearby lake. A few children were down there, merrily splashing around and giggling while a few adults -- their parents, perhaps -- watched from the sidelines. Lina smiled to herself, and told herself that _this_ was why she did what she did. So that ordinary people could live like they were now, so that children could enjoy their childhood.

And so she could become rich and famous and eat lots of exotic and unusual food, of course. That was pretty important, too.  
  
Lina sighed, watching the children play in the light of the setting sun. Gold and red leaves were dancing in the wind, being blown to and fro, in seeming randomness. In a rare moment of introspection, Lina wondered if her life was a bit like those leaves, drifting aimlessly on the wind, never quite sure where she was going. Occasionally, the wind would swirl in tiny whirlwinds, bringing leaves together and tossing them around. It was like the way she attracted friends, she supposed. No obvious rhyme or reason, just a random collection of people caught up together, carried along for the ride.

The fragrant autumn breeze carried with it the smells of the fallen, floating leaves, combined with the crisp, clean scents of the nearby lake, reminding Lina a little bit of home. A sudden gust ripped apart the swirl of leaves she had been watching, and a solitary red leaf continued on its lonely way. She wondered when her own little group would be disbanded by the wind. For some reason, it caused her a great deal of pain to think about it. Martina and Zangulus were busy rebuilding Zoana. Cellos had disappeared right after returning the Sword of Light. Zelgadis had gone off following another lead on a possible cure. And Amelia had accompanied him, despite his protests. Now it was just her, and Gourry, and Sylphiel. She wondered who the wind would carry off next. 

Lina shook herself, and stepped away from the window. She hated it when she got introspective. She wasn't very good at it, and usually ended up depressed. Besides, brooding wouldn't solve her main problem, which was this: what could they do that would be exciting, profitable, and acceptable to Sylphiel?

Then she got an idea.

* * *

It was a rainy autumn morning, not exactly the best type of day to be traveling on. Still, Lina had badgered her companions into traveling. Gourry, of course, had no complaints, or if he did, he didn't vocalize them. Sylphiel was a bit of problem, but came around after a few minutes of skillful argumentation.

Lina was beginning to think she had made a mistake.

Oh, sure, it was just a little rain. At first. But then the wind started blowing, and the rain abruptly changed from the vertical kind to the horizontal kind.

They had stayed at the inn for several more days after Lina's little epiphany, and during those days, she had gone out and found every bandit gang in the area. Instead of blowing them up, however, she simply dropped a few false rumors about a wealthy merchant passing through the area.

And so she had prepared the perfect trap. The bandits would wait along her chosen path, and ambush her party as they passed by. After all, how could a gang of bandits resist robbing a few harmless-looking travelers while they waited for the merchant to come along? Sylphiel would have no objections to killing bandits in self defense, and Lina would get some much needed stress relief. Yes, the bandits would never know what hit them.

A perfect trap, indeed.

The ambush was set for today, which was why she had pushed so hard to get moving. The problem was, this was the type of weather that all people, even bandits and self-important merchants, would find every excuse to stay out of.

As if to reinforce this thought, the clouds became bored with rain, and decided to hail for a bit.

Several minutes and a weak barrier spell later, the three travelers reached a crossroads.

"Which way, Lina?" Gourry shouted. He had to shout to be heard over the steady clattering of hail on magical barrier. It was a spell of her own invention, a derivative of Defense -- useless in a fight, but very good for keeping the weather off one's head -- and one she was particularly thankful for at the moment.

"To the left!" she shouted back, pointing in the appropriate direction.

"Lina-san, I really think we should return to the inn," Sylphiel said. Lina barely heard her.

"Not a chance! I have places to go, ruins to explore, that kind of thing. A little bad weather won't stop Lina Inverse!"

"Hey, Lina, where are we going again?" Gourry asked.

"Idiot!" she yelled irritably, and punched him. "How many times do I have to tell you?" Gourry stumbled back.

"Lina-san, that wasn't right," Sylphiel said. "You _never_ told us where we were going."

Gourry rubbed his jaw, then smacked his fist into his palm. "Ah ha!" he remarked. "That's why I don't remember!"

Lina and Sylphiel shared a glance, then ignored him and started walking.

"So, Lina-san, where exactly are we going?"

"Oh, just a small town a few days away. I have a friend there who usually has a few odd jobs for traveling adventurers..."

The girls continued to talk, and more importantly to walk, leaving Gourry in the falling hail.

"Hey, wait up already!"

* * *

Evening was swiftly approaching, and the weather hadn't improved significantly. True, it was no longer hailing, but it was still pouring rather heavily. Lina was wet, cold, and tired, and worse, she was still bored. That bandit gang hadn't bothered to show up, and that was making Lina more than a little bit peevish.

Currently, Sylphiel was trying to engage Gourry in conversation, but not really getting anywhere. Gourry was seemingly oblivious to her attentions, and as Lina knew perfectly well, Gourry was a rather bland conversationalist. It was clearly distressing the dark-haired shrine-maiden. 

Lina really wanted to blow something up.

When an explosion occurred in the woods just a short distance away, she happily realized that she might get a chance.

She took off into the trees. "C'mon, let's check it out," she called back.

Lina felt the blood pumping through her veins as she ran. The monotone hissing of the rain filtering through the leafy canopy and the sounds of her own heavy breath combined with the wet smell of mud and decomposing leaves to create a rich atmosphere of vibrant life, adding to her anticipation. She didn't know what was up ahead, and she didn't really care. All she really cared about was the chance for some action.

Lina heard an unfamiliar soprano voice call out.

"Source of all power, crimson fire burning bright, FLARE ARROW!!!"

A woman, then. She didn't know of too many men with a voice pitched that high. She readied her own spell, mystical energies gathering around her hand.

An ugly man dressed in dirty, mismatched rags jumped out in front of her, waving a rusty, pitted sword around menacingly. He didn't even have time to be surprised before Lina's fireball knocked him into oblivious unconsciousness. A few yelps of pain from behind indicated that Gourry had taken care of a few ruffians as well.

She jumped over the ugly's steaming bulk, and rushed into the clearing, followed shortly by Gourry and then Sylphiel. The sight that greeted them surprised them all.

On the other side of the clearing, a small boy, with soggy red hair spilling down to his knees was illuminated by the light of a small campfire. He was grinning confidently. On the other side of the clearing, and right in front of Lina, Gourry, and Sylphiel, was a cluster of seven bandits. The glade was pock marked with blast craters, each one containing one or more well-done bandits.

"You little demon!" A rather tall man, dressed a little better than the others shouted. "We're gonna send you to HELL! Get him!"

The other six men charged at the boy, weapons raised.

"FLARE BIT!!!"

"Owowowow!!" Six bandits ran away.

The leader shook his fist at the boy and shouted dramatically, "You haven't seen the last of the Dragon Claw gang! We will have our revenge!"

Lina's second fireball caught him square in the back. He blackened, toppled and coughed.

"You've seen the last of us," he wheezed.

"Damn it!" Lina screamed, rubbing her hands though her hair in frustration. "After all the trouble I went through to set this up and someone else gets my bandits and I haven't been able to blow up anything in almost a month!"

"Lina-san, what do you mean by that?" Sylphiel asked.

"I mean, I... er..."

"Lina-san, were you trying to hunt these bandits?"

Lina waved her hands in front of herself placatingly and smiled nervously. "Now wait a minute, Sylphiel. Whatever gave you that idea? We were just walking along and..."

"Lina-san, you planned this, didn't you?" It wasn't a question.

"Now, Sylphiel, just calm down," Lina said, backing away.

Seeing that the girls were busy, Gourry decided to talk to the little boy instead.

"Hey, kid, you okay?"

"Heh, yeah. Those guys were losers," the boy said dismissive.

"That was pretty impressive, kid. What's your name?"

"Cyan. Who are you?"

"Me? I'm Gourry. Gourry Gabriev."

Cyan's eyes widened. "Gourry Gabriev?! _The_ Gourry Gabriev?"

Gourry scratched his head in puzzlement. "Yeah, I'm Gourry..."

"As in Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev?" The boys eyes were shining with adoration.

"Umm, yes. How did you know about that?"

"Are you kidding? You guys are famous!" Cyan smiled excitedly. "Wait 'til I tell my friends. They'll be so jealous. I got ta meet a living legend!"

"I'm famous?" The thought hadn't really occurred to him before.

"Of course you're famous!" The child continued to babble in mindless hero worship.

Gourry turned to see Lina and Sylphiel arguing rather heatedly about something. He didn't know what. If he were a wiser man, or at least one with a better memory, he might have realized that interrupting their fight would be a dangerous thing.

Gourry Gabriev was many things. Wise was not one of them. Forgetful was.

"Hey, Lina. Are we famous?"

Lina and Sylphiel stopped for a moment, looked at him, blinked, and went back to arguing. Gourry tried again.

"Lina. Hey, Lina!"

"You stay out of it!" Sylphiel shouted. Lina didn't bother to yell, she just caused the ground to explode under his feet.

"Wow! She cast a Dil Brand without even saying anything," the boy said admiringly. "That's so cool!"

"Ow," Gourry agreed as he landed.

* * *

The rain had finally stopped, and for the first time Lina noticed how eerily quiet the woods were.

Lina had done a lot of traveling, and had always paid very close attention to her surroundings. There was no such thing as silence in a forest; there was always the low level hum of insects and the sounds of small rodents slipping through the underbrush. Not to mention bird calls, and the assorted grunts and groans of other forest creatures. The sound only increased with the setting of the sun.

That had happened over half an hour ago, yet the woods were absolutely still, the only sound that of a light breeze blowing through the leaves above. No owls hooting. No rodents rustling through the fallen leaves. No crickets chirping, or frogs croaking. Nothing.

It was making her nervous. She glanced side-long at her companions; the boy and Sylphiel were talking, completely oblivious to the oddness of the night. Gourry was looking around warily. Obviously, he could sense something was wrong, as well.

"Gourry..." she said.

"Lina?" He met her gaze for a moment, and returned to scanning the surrounding trees.

"There's something wrong."

"It's too quiet." After a moment, he looked at her again. "You want first watch? Or do you want second?" 

With night gradually becoming longer with the approach of winter, and an extra companion along for the trip, they could afford the luxury of three. Second watch was always the worst, since it met splitting sleep-time into two separate segments. Unspoken was the fact that if she took the second watch, Gourry wouldn't wake her when it was her turn. He could be so considerate sometimes.

"I'll take first watch," she said, and lay back onto her cloak. "This silence is so unnatural..."

"Hmm... maybe the animals were scared away by your personality."

Of course, then he would say something like that.

*POW*

"Owie."

"Go to sleep. I'll wake you when it's your watch."

* * *

Lina Inverse dreamed about food. There was nothing particularly unusual about this; in fact, it would be more unusual if she had not. However, usually in her dreams, she was the eater and food was the eatee, and not the other way around. Lina wasn't quite sure why her subconscious chose to put six inch fangs on a twelve foot tall walking carrot, but she was fairly certain she didn't like it.

It wasn't the carrot that got her, though. Nor the potatoes, headless chicken, pot roast or the spoon-wielding bowl-of-stew. No, it was the pygmy tribe of asparagus-throwing pork sausages that eventually did her in. So now, here she was, tied to a spit, and being carried in an altogether undignified manner to a fate similar to death, but not quite as permanent, since this was -- after all -- just a dream.

Then, just to make things even more bizarre, the pygmy sausages were attacked by a twenty foot rampaging oyster. The sausages dropped her, and ran into the forest of broccoli and Brussels sprouts, making distinctly pig-like squeals of fright. And to top it off, the oyster picked her up, looked at her, and popped her into its mouth.

And then she was falling down the rabbit hole...

Lina wondered where the oyster had come from, and what she had ever done to it. The sausages were explainable, and the carrots, potatoes, etc. But sea food? Maybe the oyster was getting some obscure revenge. After all, she hadn't had an oyster in several months. If she were food, she supposed she would be insulted if no one ate her.

To her left, a clock sprouted wings and started flying. A disembodied hand decided it was a good time to start clapping, and fourteen oysters marched into the open mouth of a rather portly walrus. A tree fell in the woods, but Lina was there, so the question remained unanswered.

Lina wasn't quite sure what to make of all this. She realized she was no longer gagged and bound to an oversized chicken bone. She found that if she flapped her arms quickly, she could slow her descent. A white rabbit paused briefly to look at her, then ran off, screaming "forty-two" at the top of its lungs.

This falling bit was getting old quickly, especially since the ground seemed to be getting closer, also quickly. Lina realized that hitting the ground at her current speed would probably hurt quite a bit, and decided to do something intelligent. Like cast levitation.

Apparently, though, the spirits weren't listening, since she utterly failed to miss the ground.

If this had been anything other than a dream, the following sequence of events probably would have occurred. There would have been a lot of screaming and flapping of arms, and then a spectacular impact with the ground, which would in turn cause a lot of dirt and rocks to be displaced from the ground, and a lot of pain to the faller. This would be followed almost immediately by a merciful loss of consciousness, and possibly then followed by death. As this was, in fact, a dream, the last two steps were skipped, leaving Lina Inverse with just the falling, flapping, and violent impacting with and rearranging of terra firma.

And, of course, a lot of pain.

After a few moments of experiencing that particular step, Lina picked herself up, dusted off, and looked around. What she saw didn't really surprise her very much.

She was in a dark, dank, cavernous... somewhere, with organ music playing eerily in the background. There was an ominous glow coming from nowhere in particular, providing just enough light for Lina to see a tall, dark, cloaked figure with no discernible features, while mysteriously illuminating Lina as if in full sunlight.

"Gee, you'd think I could be a bit more original," she said to no one in particular.

"LINA INVERSE," came a deep, menacing and vaguely familiar voice.

"Why can't the bad guy ever have a ridiculous squeaky voice?" she asked while looking around at the imposing darkness. "Wouldn't that be more interesting? Noooo. Instead they all have --"

The figure called again, "LINA INVERSE."

"-- to have a deep, voice that shakes the ground and makes the stalactites fall of the ceiling. This is my dream, damn it!"

"SHUT UP."

"If I want a high, squeaky irritating villain, I should be able to get one."

"I SAID, SHUT UP."

Lina sighed theatrically. "Oh, fine. Whatever. Can we skip ahead to the part where you pull out the big sword and chase me around, but no matter how fast I run I can never get away because this is a nightmare?"

Lina Inverse took a moment to breath. The figure took full advantage of her temporary silence, and reached inside his cloak to pulled out...

A fried chicken leg?

And not just any fried chicken. Lina had a highly developed sense of smell, and could instantly determine by scent alone thousands of different foods. It was clearly the world famous Kalmaart Fried Chicken, extra crispy recipe. She hadn't had any of that in nearly a year!

"DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION NOW, LINA INVERSE?"

Lina had to admit that he did.

"GOOD. I TALK, YOU LISTEN. AFTER YOU LISTEN, YOU EAT. ACCEPTABLE?"

Lina was incensed. How dare this figment of her imagination put conditions on food? Especially of the world-famous variety. Was his offer acceptable? Of course it wasn't. So she did the first thing that came to her mind. She lunged for the chicken leg.

The cloaked figure was evidently rather surprised by this tactic, because Lina managed to embed her teeth in the poultry before the man in black could move. She misjudged her leap however, and also managed to embed her teeth in the shadowy figure's hand.

What happened next would have appeared very comical to any outside observers. It wasn't very comical to either of the participants.

The dark figure screamed, and vigorously shook his arm, trying to dislodge the redheaded sorceress who had quite suddenly become attached. He dropped the chicken leg, and consequently, Lina as well. Then he pulled out a rather large sword made entirely of neon red light.

"VERY WELL, WE WILL PROCEED TO THE CHASING."

Lina bolted with the bird leg. The dream went downhill from there.

* * *

"Hey, Lina. Time to get up!"

Mornings, in the opinion of Lina, were for sleeping through. Mornings only existed for two reasons, as far as she could tell. The first was to prevent afternoon and night from bumping into each other in the wrong direction. The other was to provide an excuse for another meal.

"Lina, come on. Breakfast time."

She considered the second reason to be more important.

"Mst... hv... fud..." she mumbled. Groggily, she crawled out of her tent and opened her eyes. Catching a ray of sunlight full in the face, she promptly closed them again, then opened them, and squinted.

"Waz fr brekfst?"

Gourry just looked at her strangely. "Huh?"

Lina rubbed at her eyes, and looked over at Gourry. "I smell coffee."

"Oh, yeah. Sylphiel made it. You want some?" He offered her a cup.

Coffee was another thing Lina had relatively negative opinions about. Gourry was rather fond of the stuff, and Zel just loved it. Herself, she just couldn't understand why anyone would want to subject their taste-buds to that particular bitter torture. As far as she was concerned, coffee's only redeeming value was that if you drank enough of it, it would wake you up. She never managed to drink enough to notice it, though.

"Um... no thanks. I'm fine." She crawled over to the fire and sat down.

"More for me, then." Gourry took a sip. "Bad dreams last night?"

"Hmm, I guess so. Something about being chased by food, and then some weird guy in a cloak." Lina shrugged. "Anyway, where are Sylphiel and the kid?"

"Went down to the stream, over that way," said Gourry, gesturing vaguely at some spot to his left. "They should be back soon."

Five minutes later, which Lina spent dozing and Gourry spent drinking his third cup of coffee, Gourry's prediction came true, and Sylphiel and Cyan entered the small clearing.

Sylphiel immediately sat down next to Gourry and started chatting. Under normal circumstances, that would annoy Lina. However, she was currently dealing with a slightly different annoyance.

"Hi!" Cyan said.  
  
"Go away. I'm trying to sleep," Lina mumbled.

"Guess what."

"I don't wanna. Go 'way."

This is, of course, exactly the wrong way to get rid of little boys.

"C'mon. Guess what!" he insisted.

Gourry whispered loudly across the cooking fire. "Watch out. Her bite is worse than her bark!"

His advice was rewarded with a rock to the side of his skull. Sylphiel obliviously continued talking.

"I heard that," Lina said, dusting her hands off. She turned to the kid. "You heard him. Beat it."

"Not until you guess what!" Cyan said again.

"Alright, fine. What?" Lina said irritably.

The boy frowned. "No. You gotta guess."

"Fine," Lina snorted. "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Is it about last night?" Lina asked. The boy shook his head.

"Is it something you just saw?" A nod, this time.

"Is it dangerous?"

Cyan thought for a moment. "Not to you. Maybe to a normal person."

"You saw some local wildlife?" Lina guessed.

"Nope."

Lina sighed. She really wasn't in the mood for guessing games. "Alright. I give up. What is it?"

"You know those bandits we blew up yesterday?"

"You saw them!?" Lina exclaimed. Gourry woke up. Sylphiel finally looked at him and started fussing with the bump on his head. "I thought you said this didn't have anything to do with last night."

"It doesn't," Cyan said innocently. "That was last night. This is today. They're just sitting there in the woods."

Lina groaned. So did Gourry, but for a completely different reason.

"I do _not_ want to deal with this," Lina said. "Gourry, you deal with it."

No response. Lina looked over at him.

"Get up, jellyfish-brains!" she shouted. "I didn't hit you that hard!"

Sylphiel glared at her. "Lina-san, did you do this?"

"It wasn't even a very big rock! Damn. Now _I_ have to deal with it." Lina stood up, and turned her back to the fire, facing the woods. "Alright, bandits, thugs, goons, and assorted other criminals. Come out with your weapons drawn, so I can burn you all to a crisp. Or run away like cowards. Either one is fine with me."

A ragged group of men, covered with small cuts and burns, emerged for the bushes. A tall man with a very long and crooked nose stepped to the front. The others huddled behind him.

"You should've ran!" Cyan shouted.

"You!" bent-nose said. "You're the one who sold us that information about the wealthy merchant. You bitch. You lied!"

Lina glared. "Would you care to say that again?"

The man spat. "You bitch. You caught us by surprise last night. But tonight, you're gonna sleep six feet under." He drew his sword.

"Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?"

"Yeah, wench. Tell us your name. We'll send you to the underworld with curses."

"Lina Inverse," Lina said with a superior smirk.

"Lina... Inverse?" the leader asked. "Any of you ever heard of her?"

"Yeah," another one said. "Some no-talent sorceress from up north. I hear they call her the 'Dragon-spooker.'

Lina clenched her fists at her side. She ground her teeth in anger. Her eyes hardened. The bandits didn't notice.

"Yeah, 'cause she's so freakin' ugly, the dragons are afraid to look at her!" The bandits laughed.

"Darkness beyond twilight..."

"You'd better run..." Cyan said.

"Her lack of size is legendary!" bent-nose said, making suggestive gestures at his chest.

"Crimson beyond blood that flows..."

"Yeah, the Enemy of all who live!" said a short, ape-like man. Everyone laughed again, then stopped.

"What!?" was the collective cry. They looked at Lina.

"Buried in the flow of time..." Lina chanted. She raised her arms over her head.

"Is she supposed to glow like that?" asked another.

"I think this might be a Bad Thing..." said bent-nose.

"I'd suggest running," Cyan said. "Now."

"In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness..." A large, ominous ball of red light formed between her hands.

"Holy Shit!" The bandits bolted.

"Let those who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess...

"Too late." Cyan shook his head.

"DRAGON SLAAAAAVE!"

Over the next hundred years, the stream that ran nearby gradually filled up the depression, forming a lake that was nearly perfectly round. The trout from that lake were said to be the finest fish in the world, and fetched huge prices all across the globe. Royalty came from around the world to sample this rarest of cuisines, and it supplanted Lake Dragon cuisine as the most famous dish.

At the moment, however, there was merely a large crater in the middle of the woods, with the corpses trees and a few bandits contained therein.

"I feel much better now," Lina said. "Gourry, wake up. We're leaving."

"I warned 'em," sighed the redheaded boy. "How come no one ever listens to me?"

* * *

Lina Inverse was no stranger to strange happenings, but this was a bit frightening. The previous night had been quiet: only the soft crackling of the fire and the gentle snoring of her companions had filled the night air, and nothing else. No birds or beasts, not even insects had broken the silence of the evening.

And it was hap penning again.

Lina had a love-hate relationship with patterns. She loved patterns because they were the clues to unraveling mysteries, finding secret magical treasures, and burning the hell out of bandits. At the same time, she was careful never to fall into patterns of her own: she continually varied spell techniques and randomly chose her next destination. Patterns were usually a sign of outside manipulation.

Lina didn't like being manipulated. Not one bit.

So, what to do? Two times could still be a coincidence, but she wasn't willing to shrug off this feeling. This silence was unnatural. In her five years of traveling, Lina had never encountered silence like this while camping. Now it had happened two nights in a row.

Another thing Lina didn't like was not sleeping, and this silence was keeping her up. All the more reason to discover its cause, as far as she was concerned.

She sat up and pulled her cape around her.

"Gourry?" she called softly.

Gourry's flinch was visible, even in the dim light of their campfire. The silence was getting to him, too.

"I don't like this," he mumbled across the fire. "Something's out there, and it's scaring off the animals." He turned his eyes back to the woods around them.

"I've been casting locate spells all day," Lina said, "but if it's a magical presence, it's powerful enough to hide itself. But I haven't been trying very hard. I didn't want to alarm Sylphiel or the boy."

"Can you do one now?"

Lina nodded. "I'll need to borrow your sword. My talismans won't work for this spell."

"Why not?"

Lina sighed, frustrated by the question. "Wrong type of magic. I'd explain, but you wouldn't understand anyway."

"Oh." Gourry said. "Okay." Then he frowned, a look of deep concentration -- or as close as he could come to it -- on his face. "There's different types of magic?"

"Yes, Gourry." Lina answered, not so patiently. "Three major schools. Black, White and Shamanist. The Shamanist school has five major elements: Fire, earth, water, air, and spirit. The spell I'm trying to cast is white magic, and the Blood Stones have an affinity for Black magic, so they can't be used to cast the spell, okay?"

"Oh, okay." Gourry sat there for a moment, thinking.

"You got it?"

"Yeah. Just one question."

Lina rolled her eyes. Why was she doing this to herself? It always ended the same way. "What is it, Gourry?"

"Doesn't affinity mean never ending, or something? So if the Bloody thingies are affinite, wouldn't that mean they can do anything?"

"That's infinity, idiot. As in 'There are an infinity of stars' or 'space is infinite'."

Gourry thought about that for a moment, too. "You mean the stars have a great attraction or feeling of kinship for each other? Is that why some people can predict the future by watching the stars?"

"Gourry, just give me the damn sword, alright?"

"So that must mean they're all like a really big family, right?" Gourry said, warming to his subject. "They have mama stars and papa stars and little baby stars, and shooting stars that get kicked out of the village like Uncle Melvin." Gourry laughed. "I wonder if they have any good parties up there?"

Lina groaned. "Gourry."

"Huh? What is it, Lina?"

"Gimme. Sword. Now."

"Oh, right." Gourry unsheathed his sword, and fiddled with the hilt for a moment. He put his sword away, then drew it again. This time the blade remained in the sheath. He handed it to Lina.

"Finally," Lina said. "Well, here goes nothing."

Lina grasped the sword hilt in both hands, and concentrated. The Sword of Light burst forth, giving off a soft glow that seemed somehow more illuminating than the nearby camp fire.

"Perceiver of all things, answer my call..."

Lina released the Sword of Light, and it hovered before her, unmoving.

"You who sees all, show me... You who hears all, tell me... Share with me the truth of invisible things. MYSTIC REVELATION!"

There was a sudden flash of light, and the Sword's blade shimmered and shifted into a circular shape. Lina peered into the magical construction.

Her face peered right back.

"Well, that didn't work quite like I expected," Lina said.

"It's a mirror," Gourry said, looking at his sword intently. "I need to shave, don't I?"

"Probably wouldn't hurt," Lina replied absently. "Geez, what went wrong?"

"I dunno. Do something magic."

"What?" Lina asked. "Why?"

"Well, you said it was supposed to reveal magic stuff, right?"

"Yeah."

"So see what the magic looks like in the mirror."

"That..." Lina began. She was tempted to say it was stupid. But, now that she thought about it, it did make a bit of sense. And the spell _did_ tend to do things in odd ways. "Ah, what the heck?"

Lina called up a simple lighting spell, and held it in front of the Sword/Mirror. What she saw surprised her so much, she nearly forgot to keep the spell going.

Thousands of tiny little gnats were flying around where the ball of light should be. Spirits. Invisible things.

"Oh. Little fireflies!" Gourry exclaimed. "Do another one."

"But why would that make a mirror?"

"Simple," Gourry said. "Mirrors can't lie."

"What?"

"Well, that's what my Granma always used to say," Gourry replied. "So you said to show the truth, and it made a mirror, since mirrors don't lie. I thought everyone knew that."

Lina didn't feel like arguing about it. "Well, in any case, it's not going to be much use. You can have your sword back now, Gourry."

Gourry took the sword from the air. The mirror vanished, leaving Gourry holding only a hilt. Gourry pushed it against the sheath, and with a click, the normal metal blade reattached.

Lina had the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something. Oh well, whatever it was, it could wait until morning.

They continued their watch in silence.

* * *

Lina dreamed.

It was the same dream, the one about the man-eating food; a dream Lina truly didn't appreciate. The carrot chased her again. The pygmy sausages caught her and held her captive. The oyster showed up and chased away the sausages. The ground caved downward, and Lina fell.

This was going to hurt.

It didn't surprise her much to see that she was in a familiarly blank darkness, with a stranger dressed in an all concealing cloak.

"Oh, Cephied, not again," Lina muttered.

"Lina Inverse."

"Oh, good, you dropped the booming echoey ground shaking voice thing," Lina remarked dryly. "So what'll it be today? Food, fighting, or something else?"

"Conversation, I think. You did not listen to what I had to say, and there is much to discuss."

"And if I choose not to listen?"

The mysterious figure laughed. "Then I will keep you here until you do. Time has no meaning in dreams."

Lina concentrated on dispelling her dream. It was a trick she'd learned from her mentor, to escape from bad dreams.

The darkness around her shimmered briefly, then turned a bright blue. Colors became muted. The sound of the organ music became tinny and hollow.

Then everything went back to blackness, and the unreality of this dream reasserted itself.

For the first time since her encounter with Phibrezo, Lina Inverse felt the beginnings of true fear.

"Would you like to try that again, Lina Inverse?" the cloaked man said in an amused tone. "It was quite clever, really, but I am in control here, not you."

Lina's throat was dry. "What do you want to discuss?" she whispered.

"MAGIC!" the man bellowed. "The true and real meaning of magic, and the universe itself."

"What do you mean?" Lina asked. Why did this lunatic want to discuss magic with her?

"What is magic, Lina Inverse?" He held up a hand to prevent her from answering. "I'll tell you." The cloaked figure drew his sword, and held it vertically before himself. "Just as a sword is the extension of the swordsman's will, so to is magic the extension of a mage's."

"A swordsman trains constantly, under all conditions, until all movement is unconscious, and yet conscious. Reaction is automatic; there is no need to think about what you are going to do, you just do it."

"Magic is the same."

Lina stared with incredulity. Her captor was obviously not playing with a full deck of cards.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lina said. "Magic requires concentration. You have to focus on what you want to do, then call on the powers that allow you to do it."

"The use your magic, Lina Inverse, and see what it does."

Lina chanted the words to a simple spell: "Source of all power, crimson fire burning bright. FLARE ARROW!"

Nothing happened.

The mysterious figure laughed. "It does not work here, Lina Inverse. Perhaps you are not the great sorceress you think you are."

Lina clenched her fists.

"Maybe you are just a little girl, with no potential," the man mocked. "Go home to your sister, little Lina, before you get hurt."

Lina's teeth started grinding, and a low growl escaped her lips.

"You're a weakling, Lina Inverse. You'll never amount to anything. You're a flat-chested little slip of a girl, nobody loves you. Your friends must pity you, Lina Inverse. Everyone can see that you are unable to take care of yourself."

"You... you... BASTARD!" Lina screamed. "I'm gonna kill you!"

Lina threw her arm forward, and found her Ragna Blade blocked by the cloaked man's sword.

"You see?" said the figure. "No thought, just action."

And the dream ended.

* * *

Lina awoke, and sat up. The first light of dawn was creeping over the horizon, and the trees cast long shadows across their camp site.

She stared at her hand, and clenched her fist. A ball of light appeared around her hands.

Lina released the spell, and shivered. She hadn't summoned the spirits, she'd simply wanted light, and there was light. No thought, just action.

What was happening?

She pondered this as the sun rose, and came to a decision. She would visit her mentor.

When the others were awake, she announced their new destination, saying, "We're going to pay a visit to an old friend of mine." 

* * *

The carrot was back again, and Lina was wondering why she couldn't have some more normal dreams.

"Can't you find someone else to bother, tonight?" she yelled at the carrot as she ran.

It was the same dream. Exactly the same as it had been the previous six times in a row. And once again, it wasn't the carrot that got her. Nor the potatoes, headless chicken, pot roast or the spoon-wielding bowl-of-stew. It was the pygmy tribe of asparagus-throwing pork sausages that did her in one more time. If they seemed a little more rabid this time around, Lina didn't consider it significant.

The oyster showed up right on schedule, only twice as large this time, and with large, green, pebbled legs and a tale. The sausages dropped her, and ran into the forest of broccoli and Brussels sprouts, making distinctly pig-like squeals of fright once again, perhaps just a little more terrified than before. Lina, being rather bored with the whole adventure, just sat perfectly still, and stared at the oyster.

The oyster stared right back.

Lina didn't move.

Apparently, this confused it. The oyster sniffed around carefully, shell bare inches away from her position. It nudged the ground in front of her, then roared.

Lina still didn't move.

The oyster roared again, then lifted a giant, clawed foot, and stomped at the ground in frustration.

Lina still didn't move, again.

Upset with the whole episode, the oyster turned, knocked over an outhouse that had materialized just then, and ate the upper half of the man sitting on the john. Then oyster, half-eaten corpse, and outhouse vanished quite suddenly.

Lina was somewhat relieved, until the ground did the same.

And then she was falling down the rabbit hole... again.

* * *

After much assorted falling, flailing, and failure to fly, Lina hit rock bottom, or rather, metal bottom.

This was definitely different. Before, she had always fallen into a dark room, with a dark figure waiting to talk with her in general terms about the Wars of the Mazoku or the true meaning of magic, or fate and destiny, and sometimes concluding with an invitation to join him. But not this time.

She was on a small, narrow walkway made of some grayish metal she'd never seen before. Said walkway was sticking out horizontally from a large metal thing, which Lina might have thought looked like the vertical tail of an old-fashioned aeroplane, if she knew what an aeroplane was. Since she didn't, however, it merely looked vaguely wedge-shaped, and appeared to float in the air with no visible means of support. The entire structure seemed to be enclosed in a very large metal tube, and there was a rather stiff breeze blowing from any direction at all.

All of this was certainly strange enough, and quite different from her previous dream, but her surroundings were not of particular interest at the moment. Rather, a mysterious black-cloaked figure, who _did_ look familiar, and who was also on the walkway, captured a majority of her attention. Well, at least _that_ hadn't changed.

The mysterious character was standing between her and the large metal wedge-thing, which meant Lina had nowhere to run to except to the end of the walkway, and another long fall. Also of interest, the man was holding what appeared to be a sword of light, glowing an evil shade of red. In her own hands was another light-sword, projected from a cylindrical handle with no hand guards, glowing green.

Well, at least she had a weapon this time.

"Lina, it is time for you to join me."

"Who are you?" Lina asked.

The cloaked man extended a hand. "Come with me..." Lina could hear his labored, almost mechanical breathing. In -- out -- pause. A click. Then in -- out -- pause, and another click. "It is fate."

"Look," Lina said, "I don't know who you are, or what you're doing in my dreams, but frankly, I don't care. Just get the Hell out!"

The figure gave a low chuckle, a sound that chilled Lina to the bone. "I've known Hell, Lina. I have no desire to go back. No, Lina Inverse, if you will not join me by choice, then you will die."

"This is a dream. You can't kill me."

"Oh?" And the cloaked figure swung his sword at her.

Lina jumped back. She could feel the intense heat radiating from his blade as it passed within inches of her body. "Ow! Watch where you're swinging that thing."

The dark man didn't reply, he just swung again. Lina blocked.

"Alright buster, you asked for it!" And she attacked.

The battle raged across the expanse that Lina wouldn't have called a cat walk, but was, and Lina found herself gradually giving ground. She was a competent swordswoman, but nowhere near gifted. It was obvious her adversary was only toying with her. As he backed her to the end of the walkway, he knocked her to the ground, and held the burning tip of his weapon inches from her chest.

"You are beaten. Don't make me destroy you." He tapped her with the tip of his light-sword.

Lina felt pain. It started as a burning sensation between her breasts, where he had tapped her, and quickly spread throughout her whole body. Then, all at once, it felt like her whole being was flipped inside out, and then back again, in the space of a second.

Lina did the only sensible thing. She screamed.

* * *

Gourry watched with concern as Lina tossed and turned in her sleep. It was a nice night, and they had all opted not to use tents, so she was clearly visible by the light of the fire.

Whatever she was dreaming about seemed to be upsetting her. Lina normally slept like a stone, with only a few happy mumblings about food or treasure or bandit hunting. The last four nights, she had mumbled about food alright, but she hadn't seemed at all happy. And then, she would wake up, and refuse to talk about it, saying she'd forgotten what her dream was about.

Gourry was not a smart man, and he knew it. Still, he had been with Lina for almost two years, and he could usually tell when she was telling the truth.

This was not one of those times.

"Ah, well," he sighed. "Nothing for it, I guess."

He had briefly considered asking Sylphiel to approach her on the subject, figuring it might be one of those girl things he didn't understand, but over the last few weeks, he'd come to a startling revelation. Lina didn't seem to like Sylphiel much at all, and Sylphiel didn't seem to like Lina.

He hadn't quite put it together yet. There were a lot of things he hadn't put together yet, actually. But this one seemed the most important just now. Lina seemed to be upset when he talked to Sylphiel, and Sylphiel seemed to be upset when he talked with Lina. Neither one seemed to be particularly upset when he talked to the little boy. It was an interesting puzzle.

Further musings were interrupted by Lina's sudden scream.

* * *

"Join me, or die."

Lina regained her wits, and quickly knocked his sword away, screaming, "Shut up! Don't you have anything else to say?"

They exchanged a few more blows, and then Lina caught him with a nasty blow to the shoulder.

"Aaaagh!" With a few expert strokes, he disarmed her, sending her light-sword spinning into the abyss below. The cloaked man held his sword once again at her chest.

"There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you." Lina took a cautious step back, then another. "Lina, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power." Lina took one more step back, and bumped into a small spire. There was nowhere else to run. "Join me, and I will train you. With our combined strengths, we can end the destructive conflicts between the Mazoku and the Ryuzoku, and bring order to the world."

"I'll never join you," Lina declared defiantly. She didn't know why, but it seemed the right thing to say.

"If you only knew the true power of the Golden-Dark Lord." Then, in an apparent change of subject, he said, "Luna never told you what happened to your father."

"She told me enough," Lina said. "She told me he died before I was born."

"No Lina, I am your father." And he threw back the hood of his cloak, and Lina saw a very familiar face.

It was the face of Gaav, the Demon-Dragon King.

"No," Lina cried. "That's not true. It's impossible!"

"Lina, you have the power to destroy the Ryuzoku and the Mazoku. They have foreseen it. Even now, they send out agents to destroy you. Join me, and together we can rule the world. It is your destiny."

Lina crawled back, and clung to the spire overlooking the abyss. "No. This can't be," she cried. "It can't be true."

"Come with me. It is the only way." Gaav extended one black-gloved hand toward her.

* * *

Sylphiel and Cyan had both woken up with Lina's first scream. Together, with Gourry, they had tried without success to waken her.  
  
"Lina, wake up!" Gourry cried. "Your having a nightmare! Lina!"

Suddenly, she sat up, screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Lina looked to her left, then to her right. Her eyes focussed on the innocent face of the red-haired child. "Stay away from me," she snarled.

The boy backed away in fright.

"Lina-san!" Sylphiel exclaimed. "Don't scare him like that."

"Why are you all staring at me like that?" Lina demanded.

"Uh, Lina, you woke us all up with your screaming," Gourry said.

"Screaming? What screaming?" Lina babbled. "I don't scream in my sleep. Never have, never will. Besides, it was just a little nightmare, no big deal, we've all had them before."

"Lina-san, would you like to talk about it?"

"No, no, of course not. I'm perfectly alright. Just perfect." Lina stood up, and picked up her blanket. "Now if you don't mind, I'm going back to sleep."

Gourry sighed. "That sounds good. Everyone back to sleep. False alarm."

Despite Gourry's reassurances, nobody got much sleep the rest of the night, with one exception.

The red-headed boy slept like a baby.

* * *

* * *

  


**End Book 1, Chapter 1**

The following notes will not be repeated, though they apply to the series as a whole.

Warnings:

This fanfic may contain profanity, sexual situations and innuendo (about the same level as the Anime), angst, assorted bits of darkness, excessive violence, WAFF, humor, and a plot to take over/destroy the world. It may also contain examples of pointless slapstick, bad puns, yogurt jokes, and overused fanfic cliches. You have been warned.

Notes:

This story starts a few weeks after Slayers NEXT, and assumes the events in TRY have not happened, and never will happen. Everything contained within is based on what I've seen from the Slayers Anime, which includes all three TV seasons, the first Slayers movie, and the first three OVAs (OAVs?), and my own imagination. Most spells and their effects are taken from http://www.inverse.org, with a few original (read: borrowed from other fanfics) spells thrown in for good measure.  
  
C&C welcome, flames ignored. Emails complaining about not following Slayers cannon will be ignored. Emails requesting that I match up character A with character B will be ignored. Emails complaining that I didn't match character A up with character B will be ignored. However, comments about style, characterization, grammar, spelling, fluency, plot, etc. are very welcome.


	2. Book of Earth The 2nd Chapter

**Slayers: The Way**  
A Slayers Fanfiction

by mrthou

Chronological Notes: Takes place after Chapter 1. For more information, see Chapter 1.

Disclaimer:  
  
I didn't create Slayers, nor do I own any of it's characters. Fanfiction is a marginally legal activity which I choose to participate in anyway. If the owners or creators of Slayers tell me to stop writing this, I will.

**Book 1: Earth  
Chapter 2**  


* * *

* * *

It is said that when Ceiphied shattered the Ruby-Eyed Lord into seven pieces, he was exhausted, and fell back into the sea of chaos. But before he was completely consumed, he sent four lords to guide his children, the Ryuzoku, and to protect the world should any of the pieces of Shabranigdu ever reawaken.

It's a very pretty legend, and one that is believed by most to be true. There are a very few who know differently.

In fact, Ceiphied did not send four pieces of himself to protect the world. He sent five.

The first four Dragon Kings found affinity with the elements, one for Fire, one for Water, one for Earth, and one for Air. The fifth was left with nothing.

He took up light, saying, "Surely, this is an element worthy of my greatness." 

But the Fire-Dragon king denied him, saying, "Does not fire give off light, and heat also? These are my elements, and you may not have them." And the fifth Dragon King fled. 

"So the fifth Dragon King looked, and found electricity. And he took it up, saying, "Surely, this is an element worthy of my greatness, and one unclaimed by others." 

But the Air-Dragon King, ever jealous of his own power, said, "Do not the storms produce lightning? This is my element, and you may not have it." And the fifth Dragon King fled. 

So again the fifth Dragon King looked and found mana, the energies of growth and green things. And he took it up, saying, "Surely, this is an element worthy of my greatness, for indeed, what could be a more fitting task for a God than to bring forth life?"

But the Earth-Dragon King was displeased, saying "Do not the green things of the world grow from the ground. Does not the Earth yield it's bounty to all other beings? Leave, for this is my element, and you may not have it." And the fifth Dragon King fled.

In despair, the Dragon King turned to his final brother, the Dragon King of Water, asking, "Brother, have you seen an element for me? Or have you one to spare?"

And the Water-Dragon King, being ever wise and generous, said, "See, at night, in the sky, is a light which none have claimed. It is our foothold in the darkness, and it is unclaimed. So go, claim the element of the Moon, and be our stronghold against the darkness."

And the fifth Dragon God was pleased, and took up the unclaimed element, and became the Moon-Dragon King.

* * *

Lina and Sylphiel stared at Gourry, scarcely believing their ears. "Gourry?!" they exclaimed as one.

"That was a cool story, Gourry-san." Cyan said. "What happened next?"

"Gourry, how could you remember all of that?" Lina cried. "You never remember anything I tell you about the Dragons or Mazoku!" She waved her arms around for emphasis. "I thought you didn't even know who Shabranigdu was!"

"Yeah, but Lina, your stories are boring," Gourry said. "That was my favorite bed-time story when I was a kid."

"Gourry-san, what happened next?" the little boy asked again.

"Not now, kid," Lina said. "Look, if that's the case, then why didn't you know who the Ruby-Eyed Lord was when we fought him?"

"Ruby-Eye? Who's that? You mean that big red-eyed thing you blew up with that really big Black spell that Sylphiel doesn't like?"

"Yes!" Lina shouted. "That thing! The same one as in your story. The one that Ceiphied broke into seven pieces."

Comprehension slowly donned on Gourry's face, as a few concepts associated themselves with each other. "You mean, they're the same?"

Lina was really feeling irritated now. "Of course they're the same, Jellyfish-for-brains! What the hell did you think?!"

"Lina, don't swear in front of the child," Sylphiel admonished gently. "But you do have a point. What did you think, Gourry?"

"Um, I thought it was just a story, and the things in it just happened to have the same names."

"Just happened to have the same names?!" Lina said, still shouting. "How many Shabranigdu's and Ceiphied's can there be?"

"Gee, I don't know," Gourry said innocently. "I mean, there were three Lina's in the village where I was born, and one was my sister, and none of them were you."

Lina suddenly realized that she didn't have a good answer to that, or at least, not one that would make sense to Gourry. "Alright, fine. Why don't you tell a few more stories, and I'll tell you if the characters are real or not, okay?"

"I didn't know you liked stories, Lina!" Gourry said cheerfully. "You should have told me a long time ago. I've got hundreds!"

"Gourry-san," Cyan whined, "Finish your story, pleeeeeaaase?"

"Sure thing! That okay with you, Lina?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, fine, fine, whatever." Lina mumbled. "Maybe if he can figure this out I won't have to waste so much time trying to pound this stuff into his head."

"Okay, then. Um, let's see..."

* * *

Now the Moon, as all know, is a strange creature. Not only does she move across the sky as the sun does, but also, she changes her faces constantly, hiding herself for a few days a month, and showing herself completely only for a few days each month.

And as the face of the moon waxed and waned, so too did the power of the Moon-Dragon King.

At first, the Moon-Dragon King was content. His element, for a few short days, ruled the night. Its light could drive away the darkness, and bring hope to the creatures of the daytime. But then his power would slip, and the world would plunge toward three nights of darkness, and True Night would fall.

But Lunar, for that is what the Moon-Dragon King had named himself, noticed that there were creatures who had strength during the long hours of darkness. And he said to himself, "See, here is another element for me to rule. If I can claim the darkness, then I will own two elements, like each of my brothers, and I shall be able to bring hope to the creatures of daytime, even when the moon hides her face."

Now Lunar was a child-like God, and full of youthful enthusiasm. Seeing this unknown power at work, he called his brothers, and told them of what he had discovered. But they rebuked him, saying, "This power is not of our father, Ceiphied. We are not strong enough to touch this power, for it will consume us."

But the Moon-Dragon King was also very proud, and did not believe his brothers. He thought to himself, "Each of them has claimed two elements, and they have given me only one. "Fire and Light, Wind and Lightning, Earth and Growth, Water and Cold. Where is my second element? Is not darkness the natural companion of the moon?"

So he observed the creatures of the night, and studied how they drew their power. But try though he might, he could not see the methods they used, for the dark power was invisible to him. And then, after many years of watching, he found the answer, and gained complete dominion over the night.

* * *

"Hey, Lina, are we just going to stand here all day?" Gourry asked. "I thought we were going to see your friend."

Lina shook her head in amazement. "And here I thought you had a memory like a sieve. Okay, let's go."

"So what was the answer?" Cyan asked.

"Hmm... the answer?" Gourry said. "I don't know. Grandma never said."

"Well, then what happened next?"

* * *

Now it came to pass that the Mazoku once again grew in number, and threatened the Children of the Light, and the middle races also. And the Dragon Kings grew worried, for though the Dark Lord slept still, his children could resurrect him.

But Lunar said to his brothers, "Fear not, for the darkness of night is mine as well. I shall set my children to watching our enemies, for even in the blackest of nights, when the moon hides her face and the stars are dimmed by clouds, they can see clearly."

And the brothers agreed, but the eldest and wisest of them, the Water-Dragon King, was concerned, for he knew that none could walk in the darkness without being tainted. But he kept his own counsel, and told no one. And when his fifth brother fell from grace, he was not surprised.

* * *

"That's it?" Cyan sounded disappointed. "But what happened to Lunar? How did he fall?"

"Um... I don't know. Grandma never told me," Gourry said.

"But that's not fair," the boy whined. "I wanna hear the rest of the story!"

"Life ain't fair, kid," Lina said. "Why don't you go talk to Sylphiel. I've got something to discuss with yogurt-brains here."

"But..." Lina's glare silenced further complaints. Cyan dropped back next to Sylphiel to sulk.

"So, Gourry, where'd you learn all that?" It sounded almost like an accusation, but Gourry ignored the tone completely.

"Oh, you liked it?" Gourry asked cheerfully. "My grandma taught me. She wanted me to be the next village storyteller. I told her I wanted to be a swordsman, but she said I could be both."

"So, how much do you know?" A vein on Lina's head started twitching. That wasn't usually a good sign.

"Um, every story of the True Faith, is what Grandma said."

"Every Story!?" Now the eye was twitching, and her hands were clenched into fists. Very bad, Gourry thought.

"Uh huh. Lessee... Um... Kouma War, Creation of Universe, Elves Exile, um... The Fifth Dragon-King, Fall of the..." Before he could finish, Lina punched him.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me any of this?!" she screamed.

"You never asked," Gourry pointed out, rubbing his cheek.

"Lina-san, you really shouldn't..." A glare from Lina silenced Sylphiel.

"I don't get it," Gourry said. "So what if I know a bunch of stories?"

Lina turned to him. "Do you know how many hours I've wasted, trying to explain these things to you? And you already knew them! Why didn't you say so?"

"I didn't know they were the same thing," Gourry said. "Besides, Lina, I can't help it if your stories are so boring I can't stay awake."

Lina hit him again. Then, for good measure, she swept his legs out from under him. "Idiot." Lina stalked off, up the path.

Sylphiel helped him to his feet. "Gourry-sama, why do you let her treat you like that?"

"Oh, it's not so bad. Sometimes I even deserve it," Gourry said. He was a bit puzzled this time. "I don't know what happened this time, though. I don't think I made any comments about her chest size..." He paused for a moment. "Hey, she didn't even tell me if it was true or not. I've always kind of wondered about that."

Sylphiel seemed not to know how to respond to that.

"Gourry-san," Cyan said, tugging on his shirt, "Gourry-san. Can you tell me another story?"

"Sure thing, kid."

* * *

Lina Inverse had a headache.

This was not because of 'that time of the month', nor because of the revelation of Gourry's storytelling acumen -- although that's what she would have blamed, if she admitted to having a headache at all. At the moment there was no one in the immediate vicinity to admit it to, as her friends were some twenty yards or so behind her, and she didn't feel like waiting for them just so she could complain.

The source of Lina's headache was simple, although only Gourry was likely to have noticed the cause, and not at all likely to connect the cause to the effect. She hadn't been sleeping well, mainly because of her dreams.

The dreams smelled strongly of tampering. She couldn't really find another explanation for the excruciating detail and consistency in each. Sure, Lina had a creative imagination, but her subconscious was seldom logical enough to be consistent.

The only other possible explanation for her disturbingly similar dreams was that she was becoming a prophet.

Ceiphied, she hoped not.

Pushing aside the prophecy theory as too disturbing, she was left with an obvious question. Who or what was playing games with her mind? And why?

This wasn't her first experience with dream-tampering. It had happened to her on one other adventure, courtesy of Raudy Gabriev. Come to think of it, he must have been an ancestor of Gourry's. Raudy had been a great sorcerer, one of the most powerful humans she had ever encountered. But even he had not been able to control her dreams once she had decided to take control herself. This time, she hadn't had any luck.

So, the cause of her dreams was probably not human. That left Ryuzoku, Mazoku, various types of elemental spirits, an elf, or a human with support from any one of those. The shadowy figure had revealed himself as Gaav, which was preposterous. Gaav was dead, killed by Phibrezo and presumable absorbed by the Hell-master. Perhaps one of his underlings? Unlikely, Lina thought. She had destroyed his General and Priest herself, and no other underling would have enough power.

Xelloss? A definite possibility, but why? Of course, if Xelloss were behind it all, it wasn't likely he'd tell her.

Dream-Gaav had made another claim, more interesting, and not altogether impossible. The imitator had said that he was her father. Lina had no memory of her father, and her sister had always claimed that both their parents were dead. Perhaps she was hiding something, or mistaken.

Well, no use worrying about it. Her mentor would help her to sort it all out.

Lina sighed, then turned around and called back to her companions. "Come on, guys! If we hurry, we can be there in time for dinner!"

* * *

A good distance away there was a valley. Carved out long ago by whatever forces shaped the land, it was merely a long, shallow depression, a bowl-like indentation at the edge of a forest.

In the center of the valley, there was a tower.

It wasn't much of a tower. It did not soar, nor did it sparkle in the sunlight. It did not impose or intimidate. It did not reach for the heavens. In fact, if a phrase had to be picked to describe the tower, it would be that the tower squatted, or maybe that the tower was vaguely stump-like. About the kindest thing that could be said about it was that it achieved both its purposes, which were to get people a hundred feet off the ground, and to provide living space for a sole resident.

Said resident never left the tower. This was not because he had no desire to do so, but rather because he lacked the ability. He was an odd old man, so old that he usually couldn't even remember exactly how old he was. He was short, a bit on the chubby side, and had a very long beard he was particularly fond of. Despite his age, his hair remained jet-black, and his teeth were a strange yellowish color from several hundred years of smoking. He was also a very powerful wizard.

All of this would be irrelevant, were it not for the fact that Lina Inverse and her diverse party were scheduled to arrive in a few hours.

Said resident was aware of their coming, and was in fact busily preparing for it. Had there been anyone around to observe, they would have seen several bright flashes of light near the top of the tower, followed by a rather large cloud of orange smoke. A simple doorway appeared in the side of the tower, then vanished a few seconds later. The observer would then have been treated to a long and impressive string of profanities in eight different languages, two of which were no longer spoken.

After a few hours, the smoke ceased, the swearing stopped, and all was once again peaceful in the valley. The odd inhabitant of the stump-like tower was left to wonder just exactly when Lina Inverse would arrive, and to hope that the answer was sometime soon.

* * *

They stood at the base of the tower, and stared up into the dark evening sky. The sky was expansive, it was beautiful. The tower was not. They tried to put what they were seeing into words. The adults failed. The child did not.

"It looks like a big tree stump," Cyan said.

"Cyan-chan!" Sylphiel exclaimed, "It's not polite to say such things about another person's home."

"But it does!"

Lina chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Sylphiel. The owner won't mind." She laughed again. "I told him exactly the same thing the first time I met him. He just laughed in my face, and told me that it looked like a petrified tree stump because it is a petrified tree stump."

"So how do we get in?" Sylphiel asked. "We've walked around this place twice, and haven't seen a door anyplace."

"The door's wherever he makes it," Lina replied. "We just have to let him know we're here."

"Hey, Lina, what's that?" Gourry pointed to something about a third of the way up the squat structure, a slight protrusion that didn't quite look natural. It was impossible to see it clearly in the light of the crescent moon.

"Let's find out." Lina pulled a small concave mirror attached to a short stick out of her waist pouch. Gourry noted that, as usual, the objects she pulled from that pouch were always too large to actually fit into it. The only requirement seemed to be that the object fit through the mouth.

"What's that?" Cyan asked.

"Watch." Lina silently cast a lighting spell and set it on a small glass bead that was suspended in front of the mirror. The ball of light contracted, and infused the small sphere of melted glass with a brilliant luminance. The bead radiated its light in all directions, but much of the light reflected off the mirror, and created a focused beam.

"Wow, that's really cool!" Cyan exclaimed. "Can I try it?"

Lina shrugged. "Sure, why not? Shine it at that thing Gourry was pointing at."

The boy waved the magical torch around a few times, then pointed the beam up the tower. The assembled stared at the protrusion. Disconcertingly, the protrusion stared right back. Gourry thought it looked rather a lot like a human head. He said so.

"That's because it is a head," the head called down. It wasn't really a very pretty head. It had black hair and a long, flowing beard. The eyes were beady, the nose was pointy and angled slightly to one side, as if it had been broken. There were dark circles around the eyes. "My head, to be precise. You seem to be a bit late, Lina Inverse. I was expecting you hours ago."

"Hey Gramps, let us in! We're starving out here!" Lina called back.

"Yes, and ice crystals are starting to form on my nose hairs, and I thing I'm developing a bit of a head cold," the head shouted grumpily. "If you want in, just open the door."

Everyone looked around. "What door?" Lina asked.

"What do you mean, what door?" The disembodied head said. "The one right in front of your eyes."

"There is no door."

"There isn't?" the head queried.

"Nope."

The head took a few moments to engage in some rather sulphurous swearing. Sylphiel blushed and covered Cyan's ears. Then a door appeared in the side of the tower. A moment later, the head disappeared. The door opened, and yellow torchlight poured out.

"Well, it looks like we've been invited inside," Lina said. She suddenly got a very hungry look on her face. "Is that chicken I smell?"

Gourry sniffed. "Smells more like pheasant to me."

"You could be right, at that."

Lina ran through the doorway. A moment later, Cyan followed, and then Sylphiel. Gourry took a last look around. It was another quiet night, like that one several days ago, when they found the boy. Not a sound. Such a thing was unnatural, and usually a sign of very bad things. But then a gentle breeze brought the aroma of freshly cooked bird-flesh to Gourry's nostrils, and he realized that definitely was pheasant, probably with rice stuffing and mashed potatoes. 

He hurried through the door.

* * *

If it was a great understatement to say that the exterior of the tower was completely underwhelming, it was an equally gross understatement to say that the interior was just the opposite.

If Gourry had been a smarter man, he would have realized that the dimensions of the room he currently stood in vastly exceeded the size of the tower. As it was, he subconscious merely registered the fact that the room was really big. His conscious, meanwhile, was busy registering the fact that there was a table piled high with food, and that said table was also really big. He rushed to the table, where his companions were already partaking of the feast, and started to partake quite a bit himself.

Gourry's subconscious continued to catalog information about his surroundings. What use this served is a bit of a mystery, as very little of it would filter into his conscious thought, but ever since his earliest childhood, he had been trained to pay attention to details. And so pay attention his subconscious did. And what it saw was quite amazing indeed.

The room was not, in fact, as large as it first appeared. It was still quite a bit larger than any room had a right to be in a tower of this size, but not nearly as large as the impressive impression of limitless space would indicate. The walls were made of the same grayish petrified wood that made up the outside of the tower, but cleverly placed mirrors were spaced around in such a manner that they reflected very little of the interior of the tower and quite a lot of nothing. 

Aside from the table, there was very little of interest in the room. There were a few bookcases scattered about the room, and an odd chair or table here and there, but other than the room's abnormally large size, there was nothing to suggest that this room was at all magical.

Cataloging the doors was giving Gourry a bit of a hard time. The reasons were threefold. First, the mirrors kept playing tricks on his eyes. They made the room appear to go much farther than it actually did, and in the process, made it difficult to focus on anything less than the illusionary infinity they presented. Secondly, the doors that he had identified were all built from the same material as the hard-to-identify walls. And third, some of the doors seemed to be free standing, leading to nowhere.

He did note, however, that the door they had entered through had gone the way of the roast pheasant he had smelled earlier, which is to say that it had disappeared without a trace. He did wonder why Lina had eaten the bones as well, though.

A good forty-five minutes of rather aggressive eating later, which had ended rather spectacularly in a fork fight that lasted just over five minutes and concluded with Lina chewing on the table instead of the last chicken leg, the meal was more or less over, Gourry finally had a chance to look around the rather remarkable room. He could now see that the room was perfectly round, and that there were quite a lot more doors than he had originally thought. What was particularly strange about the doors was that they only had one side. If you walked around to look at the back, the door disappeared entirely. Approaching one door from the side, he stuck an arm through the back, and watched it materialize through the front. He tried to do it the other way, but found the door itself to be quite solid.

In addition to the one-sided doors, there were a number of staircases that also seemed to lead to nowhere. Most of them consisted of four or five steps leading upward, and then they just stopped. When he tried to walk up one, he simply found himself walking down another one, back into the same room.

After several minutes of playing with the doors, during which Lina and Sylphiel spent chatting and Cyan spent falling asleep, their host appeared. Where he had been the entire time was a bit puzzling, and how he had managed to prepare a seven-course meal with his head stuck in the tower wall was a bit more so, but Gourry was fully prepared to write the whole thing off as magic. And given that he had just materialized in front of their eyes, that guess was more than likely correct.

He wasn't a very tall man. In fact, he was barely taller than Lina. His beard was long and white, and now Gourry could clearly see that it was as white as his hair was black. The pointy nose looked markedly less so in good light, and appeared not so much to have been broken as to have grown that way.

His build was difficult to ascertain, as he wore heavy brown robes that hid his figure. He appeared to be rather muscular, judging from the muscles in his neck. He was not visibly armed.

"Welcome to my humble abode," he said after a moment. "I am Doctor Merrin Marco Tellar al Pralahad. What brings you to here, Lina Inverse?"

"What, you mean you don't know?" Lina said, sounding a bit surprised.

"I am not a psychic, Lina, nor a prophet, at least not in the usual sense," the wizard replied. "and not a very good one, at that. I know not what brings you here, nor why you should choose to bring your family. Although I don't think I recognize the girl..." Pralahad trailed off.

"Sensei, this isn't my family..." Lina said uncertainly.

"That child isn't your son?" the doctor exclaimed, pointing at Cyan. "And the blonde man isn't your husband?"

"What?" Lina and Sylphiel shrieked simultaneously.

Gourry wasn't sure why this upset them so much. He said as much. "It's not that big a deal. Remember last town we were at, Lina? They thought Sylphiel and I were married, and you were our daughter."

"What?" Lina said again. "They thought I was your _daughter_?"

"Yeah. Since you're so short and you don't have much of a chest and you were throwing a tantrum at the time..."

Lina kicked him rather hard at that point. As usual, he wasn't sure why, but he felt it a definite improvement over being fire-balled. He collapsed to the floor.

"But I could've sworn you married a tall, blonde man," the old sorcerer continued. "He's not your husband?"

Lina said, "No."

"And you don't have any children?"

"No," she said again.

"You're absolutely sure?"

Lina nodded.

Gourry groaned. He managed to sit up.

The old man pulled an abacus out of thin air and started flipping beads around. He looked up occasionally, and then went back to flipping beads. "What year is it?" Pralahad asked finally.

Lina told him.

"Wrong year. Damn!" And with that, the old man vanished in a pointless but rather impressive looking puff of smoke.

"Lina-san, what was all that about, just now?" Sylphiel asked. "Why was he asking you about..."

Lina laughed, although to Gourry's ears it sounded a bit strained. "Don't worry about it. He does that from time to time. He umm... skips around in time a bit. I don't really understand how it works, except that sometimes he visits the future, and sometimes he visits the past."

"But that means you and Gourry-sama..." Sylphiel was on the verge of tears. "You said that there was nothing between you two! If that's not true, why am I even here?"

"W-w-wait, don't jump to conclusions, Sylphiel. I mean, he visits the future, sure, but it's not always our future." Lina picked up her fork, and held it parallel to the ground. "It's like this. Time flows along," she ran a finger down the handle of the fork, "and then we make decisions. And depending which decisions we make, different things happen." She pointed at the prongs of the fork. "Every time we make a decision, it creates another possibility. In one possibility, we take the top branch. In another, we take the middle. In a third, we take the bottom. So there's an infinite number of possibilities. When he travels to the future, he doesn't necessarily travel to the same one we're going to experience. Get it?"

"So you are saying that what he predicts is only one of may different possibilities?"

"Yeah, you understand now?"

Sylphiel sniffed. "I think so."

Gourry didn't understand of course. He said so. "Could you start over at "'don't jump to conclusions'?" This earned him another kick, which had to be some sort of record. Gourry couldn't remember the last time she punished him two times in a row without using magic. Of course, Gourry couldn't remember much of anything that didn't involve food or sword-fighting, or Granny Gabriev's stories, so that wasn't necessarily saying much.

"Lina, must you do that to Gourry-sama?" Sylphiel asked.

"He was being an idiot."

"But that's not a reason to hit him, is it?"

"Why not?" Lina demanded. "Pain's a very effective learning tool."

A few minutes of more or less friendly bickering, their host returned this time through one of the magical doors. He was now wearing a pair of blue pants and a very strange-looking ruffled white shirt. He had also acquired a set of oddly rectangular glasses. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light, and a fanfare of a thousand invisible trumpets filled the room.

"Where's all that sound coming from?" Gourry tried to say, but nobody heard him, they were too busy covering their ears.

Pralahad waved one of his hands, and shouted, "STOP!", or at least, his mouth opened and his lips moved in such a way that it looked like he said stop. Gourry couldn't be absolutely sure, as he couldn't hear anything other than the trumpets.

Quite suddenly, the fanfare stopped, except for one lone trumpet that started to play a jazzy little solo that sounded a bit like a folk song Gourry knew.

"I said STOP!" the old man cried. "Didn't you hear me the first time?"

The trumpet cut off with a rather ugly squawk that sounded a bit like a rather messy if necessary bodily function.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I trust you enjoyed your meal?"

Everyone just stared at him.

"Oh, how terribly rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I am Doctor Merrin Marco Tellar al Pralahad."

"Umm, Sensei, you already introduced yourself," Lina said.

"Oh, I did?" Pralahad said in surprise. "Well, that should make things go a bit faster then."

"What was with the trumpets?" Gourry asked.

"Oh, just an exorcism that didn't go quite as planned," the old man said dismissively. "Nothing to worry about. They're gone now. So, shall we adjourn to my study, then?"

Gourry thought that was a bit abrupt, but stood up. So did Lina and Sylphiel, who accidentally woke the boy in the process.

"Wait, Sensei, before we go..." Lina said.

"Hmm, yes?"

"Well, there's going to be a bit of a technical discussion here, and I'm not sure the kid there'll be interested. You have something that could keep him busy?"

The old man thought for a moment, the summoned up a stack of paper and some quill pens. As an afterthought he conjured up a stack of bronze coins and a few wooden toys.

"I suppose that should work, although I'm not certain you should leave the child unattended."

"I'll stay with him," Gourry volunteered. "I don't understand any Magic anyway."

"Good idea, Gourry." Lina flipped a coin to him. "Here, keep flipping this coin. Every time it comes up heads, write down an X. Every time it's tails, write down an O. Play with the kid a bit. We'll be back in a while."

The old man clapped his hands together. "Well, now that that's all settled." He performed a rather intricate gesture involving snapping both fingers repeatedly and clapping a few times, then reached for the door he had just come through and opened it.

"Right this way, ladies," he said. Lina and Sylphiel walked through the doorway and disappeared.  
  
"Oh, by the way," Pralahad said, "if the trumpets come back, just wave your arms around and tell them to stop." Then he walked through the magical door and disappeared, closing the door behind him.

Gourry sat down, and pulled over a piece of paper and a pen. He flipped the coin.

Heads. He wrote down an X.

Flip. Heads. He wrote down another X.

Cyan sat down next to him. "Whatcha doing?"

"Flipping a coin," Gourry replied. "Every time I get heads, I write down an X, and every time I get a tails I write down an O."

"Can I keep score?"

"Sure, here you go." Gourry pushed the pen and paper to the red-haired boy.

"Okay, flip the coin!"

Gourry did so. It landed heads-up.

"Heads!" Cyan called. "Flip it again."

Three more flips. Three more heads. Each time Cyan yelled, "Heads!"

Gourry looked at the coin closely, turning it over and over in his hand. Yes, it had two different sides. A picture of the old man's head on one side, and a bird of some kind on the other.

He flipped again. Heads.

"Heads! Seven in a row!"

"I wonder how long we can keep this going?" Gourry said. He flipped the coin. Heads.

"Heads! That's eight!"

Flip.

"Heads! That's nine!"

* * *

Lina seemed to know these surroundings quite well, Sylphiel thought, or at least she seemed to not be bothered by them. Sylphiel, however, was decidedly uncomfortable, as she suffered through feelings of vertigo as they passed from room to room.

What was throwing her off was the exquisite realism of the surroundings. That and the transitions between rooms. Just a moment ago they had been strolling through a beautiful grove of unidentifiable deciduous trees with smooth white bark and silvery leaves. Then, as they had passed under an arching bough, they were suddenly in the middle of a desert. When Sylphiel looked back, what had been a tree moments ago was now a strange stone carving that looked somewhat like a human head.

"Lina-san, what is this place?" Sylphiel asked.

"It's a place where the four worlds overlap," Lina said. "I don't really understand it myself, but it's harmless."

They continued to walk through the desert, the only noises were the crunching of the sand under their shoes and sounds of their labored breathing.

"How can all of this be inside a building? It seems so huge. And I can see the sun, over there." Just then, they walked between two sand dunes and were suddenly in an ice cave.

"Do not trouble yourself overmuch, child," the old man, Pralahad, called over his shoulder. "It's simply a part of one of my ongoing experiments. It can't harm you. Do you feel cold, now? Did you feel hot a moment ago as we traveled through the desert?"

"No," Sylphiel answered, "but still, how can it all fit?"

"It's not as large as it seems," Lina said. "We've been going steadily uphill the entire time, and in a circle." Lina walked toward an opening in the wall. "See this cave? It's not really here. It leads to a small workspace in the center of the tower. There's one on every other level or so."

"But when we were in the desert, or the forest before that, you could go any direction."

"It only looked that way," the doctor said. "You wouldn't be able to walk very far without running into the wall. You may not see anything, but it's there."

"Hey, Sensei," Lina said, "couldn't we have just taken the elevator?"

"No, it's temporarily out of service."

They walked on, through several more environments, before coming to a stop in a metal corridor.

"Oh, Ceiphied, I hate this part," Lina muttered.

Pralahad addressed Sylphiel directly. "Now, were about to enter my private study. The door's a bit strange. It has a number of enchantments on it, and you'll experience some discomfort as we pass through. It's there to keep out a pair of rather ambitious Mazoku."

"What does it do?" Sylphiel asked.

"It passes through a space that is completely devoid of magic." The old man smiled. "Well, shall we, then?" And he stepped through the wall.

"I hate this," Lina muttered again. Then she stepped through as well.

Sylphiel stood facing the wall, unsure of what to do. Was there a magic word, or some other trick? Or was she just to walk as if the wall weren't there at all?

Tentatively, she reached out a hand to touch the wall. To her surprise, her fingers encountered nothing at all. She stepped forward, immersing her entire arm. She stretched here arm as far as it would reach, but found nothing.

Taking a deep breath, Sylphiel stepped into the wall.

And then she saw nothing.

Sylphiel screamed.

It was the most disturbing sensation she had ever felt. Sylphiel felt as if her very soul were being sucked out through the pores in her skin. Her skin tingled, her eyes burned, and the muscles in her body felt like they were being simultaneously pounded and torched. She felt a wave of nausea overtake her, and then another.

And then she was falling.

Sylphiel screamed again.

A pair of strong arms caught her under her arms, and Sylphiel felt the reassuring presence of solid ground under her feet.

"Sylphiel," Lina's voice called, "are you alright?"

Sylphiel opened her eyes -- she hadn't realized they were closed -- and saw that she was in a long, narrow room with a large rectangular table in the center. There were other pieces of furniture about, a few chairs, a couch, and several other smaller tables, all littered with scrolls, bottles, vials, mirrors, and other odds and ends. It all seemed to be slightly out of focus.

"Sylphiel?"

It took Sylphiel a moment to realize Lina was behind her. It was, in fact, Lina who had caught her. Lina was quite a bit stronger than she looked, Sylphiel noticed. It always surprised her to realize just how strong Lina really was. Sylphiel had -- now that she thought about it -- observed Lina pick up Gourry on several occasions. It was so easy to forget because of Lina's diminutive stature and childish manner.

"Yoo-hoo, earth to Sylphiel... Anyone there?"

"Put your friend on the couch, Lina," Sylphiel heard Pralahad say. "It will take her a while to recover. Actually, she took it better than I thought she would."

"What do you mean?"

"She's still conscious."

Sylphiel felt herself being carried and carefully set down on the couch. Sylphiel wasn't quite sure why, but her eyes didn't seem to be working properly. They had closed on her again, while she wasn't paying attention. She opened them, and saw Lina's worried face hovering above her for a moment. She tried to say something to reassure her, but found that she didn't have the energy to move her mouth. It took all her effort merely to keep her eyes open.

"Sylphiel, child, close your eyes," Pralahad said. "You'll recover quicker." Sylphiel did as he suggested.

"Every time you do something like that, Lina Inverse, my back ached in sympathy."

"What, pick up Sylphiel?" Sylphiel heard Lina say. "She doesn't weigh all that much."

"She does, however, weigh a good deal more than you do."

Lina laughed. "Most people do. You included, old man. Anyone who's been through what my... sister..." Sylphiel could almost feel Lina shudder as she said that word, "put me through should be able to lift twice their own weight, easy."

"Ah, yes," the old man said, "your sister. How is she doing, by the way? I haven't seen her in a very long time."

"I haven't either," Lina replied flatly.

"Ah. Well, time is a relative thing, Lina Inverse, doubly so in my case, as you know," the old man replied. "Still, I'm sorry to hear that."

The whole exchange sounded rather tragic to Sylphiel. If she still had any close family, she'd be sure to see them as often as possible. Especially if she had a sister. Lina probably missed her terribly.

"So, Lina, what really brings you to my humble abode?" Pralahad asked in a rhetorical fashion. "If you had been seeking instruction in the Mystic Way, you would have come alone. If you were in serious trouble, you would have had the denizens of the seven hells flocking at your heels as you arrived."

Lina gave an indignant little snort.

"Metaphorically speaking, of course," the doctor continued. "I must therefore surmise that your arrival has one of two purposes, or maybe both simultaneously. One, you are bored, and seek a quest or adventure, having come with the assumption that I can provide you with a suitable distraction. Or two, you are having some sort of problem of a magical nature that you are unsure how to deal with." The old man laughed, a warm, pleasant little sound of a man satisfied with his own cleverness. "Am I correct?"

Sylphiel heard Lina reply with a laugh of her own. "More or less. Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice, Old Man?"

"Oh, the shame of it all," the doctor wailed. "I, the greatest instructor of the Mystic Way in the past two millenia, mocked by his own pupil, and relegated to a mere diversion for children. L-sama, how you torture me so."

"Child? CHILD??" Lina screeched. Lina had a lot of buttons like that, Sylphiel noticed, little things that would set off her temper. Her sometimes childlike appearance was one of them. "Why don't I just show you what this child can do?!"

Sylphiel started to regain her sight at this moment, just in time to nearly lose it again in one of the more brilliant displays of firepower she'd witnessed. There was a surge of heat, then a deep, rumbling boom like thunder a long way off. It took Sylphiel a moment to process the fact that nothing had really happened.

The rumbling stopped, and the old man appeared unharmed. Lina, on the other hand, looked like she had just been on the receiving end of one of her own custom fireballs. Which, in fact, she had been.

"Oh, please, Lina Inverse," Pralahad said sternly. "You know better than that. It has never worked before, and it won't work now."

Lina coughed. "Had to try, at least. Nothing's changed, I guess." She coughed again. "How the hell do you do that, anyway?"

"Maybe someday I'll tell you, if you don't figure it out yourself. In any case, though, it appears you friend has regained the use of her senses."

"Sylphiel?"

Sylphiel sat up and looked around. "Lina-san, what just happened?"

Pralahad motioned at the walls of the study. "What you passed through when you entered this room was a sort of security system, a place where the astral plain no longer intersects with our physical one." Pralahad sighed. "It has the effect of keeping out various spirits and demons, but has the side-effect of being very uncomfortable for anyone attuned to magic. Your swordsman friend could pass through without so much as a missed step, but you yourself, and Lina, more attuned to the astral energies, suddenly find yourself deprived of your sixth and seventh senses."

"Sixth and sevenths senses?" Sylphiel asked. "I thought there were only five."

"The sixth and seventh senses are simply how you can 'feel' magic around you, and how you can shape it too your will. Nothing more," Pralahad replied. "They aren't a part of the official Mystic Teachings of the world at large, because they just confuse people." Pralahad shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about your reaction to passing through the barrier. The two greatest students I ever had fell flat on their face and could not be roused for hours after the first crossing."

"Hey!" Lina protested. "I did not!"

"I was not referring to you, Lina. You are not the greatest student I have ever had. I am not entirely sure you are really my student at all. Disciple, maybe, or perhaps... my slave? I shall have to think on it."

Lina just growled.

"Why do you call Lina-san slave, Pralahad-sensei?" Sylphiel asked.

"A very old joke," the old man said.

"Very," Lina growled. "It's so old he's forgotten that it was never funny."

"Miss Inverse, you wound me, you really do."

"Who was your greatest student, then, sensei?" Sylphiel asked. "And how many other students have you had?"

Pralahad looked at Sylphiel with a twinkle in his eye. "Ah, child, that is an excellent question, most excellent indeed. The answer to you second question is simple enough: I have had 23 students at this point in history. Famous mages all of them, except for Danny the Chartreuse, but then, what can you expect from a title like that?"

Sylphiel had to admit it was a silly title.

"Ah, but the first question is a bit more difficult to answer, so I'll go with my first impulse and say that my greatest student was Rezo the Red, followed by Luna Inverse, and at a rather distant third, none other than your friend, Lina Inverse the Pink."

"Pink?" Sylphiel wondered aloud.

"Damn it, old man, why did you have to bring _that_ up, huh?" Lina shouted. "I _hate_ that title, it's absolutely ridiculous. Ceiphied, why'd I have to get stuck with such a wimpy color? Do you know what that information could do to my reputation?"

"And you," Lina said, turning to Sylphiel with an angry fire burning in her eyes, "don't tell anyone about my color, okay? Don't breath a word."

Sylphiel opened her mouth to acknowledge, but Lina cut her off. "Not. A. Word."

Sylphiel nodded.

The fire was gone, and Lina smiled and winked at her. "Good, 'cause I'd hate to have to do anything to one of my friends, right?"

"I think I've had about as much as I can stand with your silliness, Miss Inverse. It's time for us to get to the point again. Hopefully, this time we can stick to it." Pralahad looked at her seriously. "Namely, why are you here?"

"I'm here for two reasons, actually," Lina told him. "First, my companions and I are a bit bored, and I thought you might have something interesting for us to do. You guessed that much.

"Second, I'm here because I've been having some very bad dreams recently, and I can't figure out what to do with them."

The old man pondered this for a moment, and slowly started to levitate out of his chair. Lina didn't bat an eye, but Sylphiel thought it rather remarkable.

"There's not much I can help you with when it comes to dreams," the old man said finally. "Dream reading has never been one of my strong suits. You have more skill in that particular area than I do. Your sister would know more about it."

Lina flinched at the mention of her sister. Sylphiel wondered why. Did Lina feel guilty about her sister for some reason?

"Regardless, tell me about your dreams, and I'll see what I can come up with."

"It's hard to describe, really. I've only had dreams like this once before, but..."

"Yes? But what?" Pralahad prompted.

"Last time I had dreams like this, someone was tampering with them, actually taking them over and controlling them. But last time, I was being shown old memories." Lina shrugged. "This time, the tamperer just appears and talks to me."

"And how did you arrive at the conclusion that your dream was being tampered with?"

"Two things. One, it was the same dream every night. I keep having nightmares about my food getting angry and trying to eat me." Sylphiel tried to stifle a giggle, but failed. Lina glared at her momentarily, then continued. "I think the intruder is just using that dream as a sort of anchor. He latched on to it, and now he gets back in every night using that dream.

"The second thing is, the intruder seems to be the one controlling things. The dream world obeys his commands, and not mine. What has me really worried is I haven't been able to take control, even though I _know_ I'm dreaming when it happens."

The old wizard frowned. "That is a matter of some concern, to be sure. For one such as you to be unable to assert control over your dreams means that the intruder is immensely powerful, or has some sort of personal connection to you."

"Yeah, I figured as much," Lina said.

"So, Lina Inverse, what does this intruder talk to you about?" Pralahad asked.

"Oh, various things. He talked about magic, and the Mazoku Wars, and he talked in vague terms about some sort of betrayal visited upon him."

And so Sylphiel listened for the next half-hour as Lina recounted to them her dreams, down to the minutest detail. It amazed her that anyone could remember their dreams so clearly; her own dreams were usually fuzzy, half-remembered bits and pieces without any form of coherence. Most of her dreams she was glad to forget. It wasn't fun reliving the destruction of one's town. But then, this was a magical dream. Sylphiel had never had one of those, so she couldn't say for certain if they were any different.

"You are hiding something, Lina Inverse," the wizard accused, snapping Sylphiel out of her internal monologue.

"Well, it's a bit silly," Lina dodged.

"We are all silly from time to time," Pralahad said sagely. "THe very wise are often the silliest. They simply know when they can be silly, and when they cannot. Now is a perfectly reasonable opportunity to be silly, Lina Inverse. I suggest you take it." He slowly floated back into his chair.

"Well, alright," Lina sighed. "The intruder told me that he was my father in one of my dreams. Then he removed his cloak, and he was the Chaos-dragon, Gaav."

"Gaav? Why on earth would a Mazoku lord claim to be your father?"

"I said it was silly," Lina protested.

"Gaav is dead, though," Sylphiel murmured. "Isn't he, Lina?"

Lina nodded. "Yes"

"Tell me exactly what happened," Pralahad said. "Every little bit. Leave not a single detail out, or I'll search your thoughts myself." He suddenly seemed very serious, as opposed to the slightly comical serious he had been affecting up until now. "I really don't want to have to do that, and neither do you."

Lina shivered. "Why are you threatening me, old man?"

It surprised Sylphiel to see Lina back down without much of a fight. She didn't know Lina all that well, but she'd seen on several occasions how Lina responded to threats. Her usual reaction was to get angry and blow things up. _She must really respect this wizard,_ Sylphiel thought to herself.

"Mazoku lords do not die easily, Lina," Pralahad responded. "You may be right to assume he is dead. But then again, you may not."

"I destroyed a piece of Shabrinigdu, didn't I?"

"Ah, so that _was_ you." The old man smiled. "Very good. I thought you had a hand in that. But I have not yet heard from your lips that you killed Gaav."

"I didn't." Lina then recounted her encounters with Gaav, sparing nothing. She talked about her time inside the mountain, with the Water Dragon King. She recounted her final battle with Gaav, and how Phibrezo had been her travelling companion all along, and how he stole Gourry. She talked about her terrible battle with Gourry, and the final show-down with Phibrezo with perfect clarity. All the little bits and pieces that Sylphiel had been missing were methodically filled in. She was beginning to appreciate just how much Lina had gone through.

As Lina reached the end of her tale, she began to cry openly. Not a false sort of sobbing to get her own way, as Sylphiel had often seen, or because she was injured and was looking for pity. Rather, it was an honest, soul-wrenching cry from the heart, caused by a deep emotional wound. Sylphiel suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy for this young woman who had lived through so many terrible and tragic things.

Sylphiel got up from the couch and walked over to where Lina was sitting. Reaching out, she put her hand on Lina's shoulder, trying to offer some measure of physical comfort, to help take away Lina's pain.

Lina stood up so quickly she knocked over her chair, sending it crashing to the floor. She threw herself into Sylphiel's arms and cried. Sylphiel just hugged her, stroking her hair and saying, "It's alright," over and over again.

Pralahad just watched.

Sometime later -- how long Sylphiel wasn't sure -- Lina's sobbing subsided, and she fell into a deep sleep.

Pralahad snapped his fingers, and Sylphiel felt Lina's weight being lifted from her arms. He pointed to the couch, and Lina's sleeping form floated there, coming down to rest gently on the cushions.

Sylphiel found that she herself was crying.

"Ah, child," Pralahad said, looking at her. "You have a most rare gift. You are a true healer."

"I did nothing," Sylphiel said.

"You shared her pain, Sylphiel, and in doing so, made hers less."

"I don't understand," Sylphiel said. It was true: she didn't understand. She didn't want to.

"There are many types of healing, child, as many as there are types of wounds. Not all are physical" The old wizard sighed. "You did with a mere touch what would have taken me hours to do with gentle talking."

"You wanted her to cry like that?" Sylphiel accused.

"_She_ wanted to cry, child, but she would not let herself. It is one of her greatest weaknesses. Lina bottles up her true emotions, letting so few show through her carefully constructed facade. It all builds up, increasing her emotional pressure. She needs to cry every once in a while, to relieve that pressure. Otherwise, she cannot heal."

Sylphiel wiped her eyes. "She is hurting?"

"You ask a foolish question, child. You already know the answer." The old man sighed. "You hurt as well, child. I can see it in your eyes. You have lost people who you cared about a great deal. Your family, I would guess. And that is a great injury indeed. But she has a greater one still. You at least knew that they loved you. Lina does not. She has always lived alone, in her own mind, unloving and unloved. She still does not realize that there are people who care for her. And that is a terrible way to live.

"She finds herself caring for people now. You are one of those she loves. That blonde man downstairs is another. When she recounted the tale of his kidnapping, she relived one of the most painful moments of her live. A loved one, taken from her. And then she was offed a choice: risk the destruction of the world for him, or watch him and others she loved be destroyed instead."

"She will sleep for a number of hours, now," Pralahad said. "It takes much energy to head. I'll take you back down; the trip isn't nearly as bad going the other way." He waved a hand, and a door appeared before them. He opened it. "This way, child."

Sylphiel stepped through the door, and found herself back in the dining room with Gourry and Cyan.

"You have a gift, Sylphiel," Pralahad said through the doorway. "Always remember that, and never take it for granted. But empathy is a double edged sword. In order to heal another's pain, you must take some measure of it upon yourself. Never go to far without releasing your own pain. Don't bottle it up, or you will end up worse than those you heal."

And with that, he closed the door, and it disappeared.

* * *

That night Lina Inverse slept, and for the first time in a week she was untroubled by dreams.

* * *

* * *

**End Book 1, Chapter 2**


	3. Book of Earth The 3rd Chapter

Slayers: The Way  
  
A Slayers fanfiction by mrthou  
  
Chronological Notes: Takes place after chapters 1 & 2. Spoilers for Slayers and Slayers NEXT.  
  
Disclaimer: I didn't create Slayers, nor do I own any of it's characters. Fanfiction is a marginally legal activity which I choose to participate in anyway. If the owners or creators of Slayers tell me to stop writing this, I will.  
  
Book 1: Earth  
  
Chapter 3  
  
==========  
  
Gourry Gabriev was not a smart man, but he was a persistent one. Once he started on a goal, he'd continue to push on against all obstacles. He honestly believed that if he set his mind (no matter how insignificant it might be) and body to a task, he'd manage to get it done. He wasn't always right about this, of course, but he was right often enough to keep believing it.  
  
In this instance, however, he probably would have been better off giving up.  
  
He flipped the coin. It spun and shimmered in the air, turning end over end. It hit the wooden floor with a musical sound, spun around a few times, wobbled a bit, and fell.  
  
"Heads," the boy, Cyan, announced with little enthusiasm. "That's two hundred and ninety-six times in a row."  
  
Gourry just couldn't figure this out. The coin was a perfectly normal silver coin, as far as he could tell. One side had a picture of some weird old man's head, and the other side had a picture of a bird on it. But no matter how many times he flipped it, it always landed heads up. Or at least, it had every time he had tossed it. Cyan couldn't seem to get anything but tails.  
  
Cyan picked up the piece of paper he was writing on, and showed it to Gourry. "Gourry-san, I'm running out of space on this paper." He flipped it over a couple of times to demonstrate the point. Indeed, both sides were covered with little x's.  
  
"Umm... well, we can stop at three hundred, I guess," Gourry said.  
  
Sylphiel stepped out of a door that hadn't been there a moment ago. A voice from the other side said something to her, and then the door closed.  
  
"Oh, hi Sylphiel," Gourry said. "Where's Lina?" He flipped the coin again. Heads. "Two hundred and ninety-seven."  
  
"Oh, she's sleeping," Sylphiel replied. "Two hundred and ninety-seven what, Gourry-sama?"  
  
"Heads, Sylphiel-san," Cyan answered. "Gourry-san is flipping a coin, and we're keepin' track of how many heads and tails he gets. So far he's gotten almost three hundred heads."  
  
"Oh. And how many tails? About the same?"  
  
"Zero," Gourry responded. He flipped again. Heads. "Two-ninety-eight."  
  
"That's impossible!" Sylphiel exclaimed.  
  
"No, merely improbable. Nothing's impossible," Gourry said. He looked up at her. "At least, that's what Granny used to say. I never really understood that. What's spontaneous speaking got to do with doing the impossible?"  
  
"Spontaneous speaking?" Sylphiel asked, confused.  
  
"Yeah, you know, like giving an improbable speech."  
  
"Don't you mean impromptu speech?" Sylphiel corrected.  
  
"Nah. There's nothing unlikely about speaking," Gourry replied. Sylphiel groaned, and buried her face in her hands. "Um, did I say something wrong?"  
  
Sylphiel looked at him and gave him a rather weak smile. "It's nothing, Gourry-sama. Your grandmother seems like a very wise person. I'd like to meet her some time."  
  
"Oh, yeah, you'd like Granny. Actually, she's a lot like Lina." Gourry frowned in thought. "Except she has white hair, and she likes stories instead of magic." Gourry laughed. "She hits me when I do stupid things, too. That walking stick of hers hurts a lot more than you'd think."  
  
Gourry noticed Sylphiel's expression tense slightly. In fact, she looked almost... frightened, or maybe slightly ill. "Gourry-sama, are you a... masochist?"  
  
"Huh? What's that?"  
  
Sylphiel turned red, then sighed. "Never mind. It was just a silly thought."  
  
"Oh." Flip. "Two-ninety-nine."  
  
"This is boring," Cyan said. "Tell me another story, Gourry-san!"  
  
"Umm, just one more flip." He flipped the coin one more time. Heads. "That's three hundred even. I guess that's enough. Umm, what do you want to hear?"  
  
"I dunno," the red-haired boy said. "Anything's good, as long as it's like the story you were telling earlier."  
  
"Okay. How about the Birth of Humans, then? That's always been one of my favorites."  
  
Cyan nodded, and Sylphiel took a seat on the floor to listen. Gourry absently tucked the coin into a pocket, and began his tale.  
  
"Now it came to pass that the Lord of Nightmares looked upon what she had created, and she saw that it was good. But it was yet incomplete..."  
  
* * * * *  
  
Lina Inverse awoke, feeling a bit stiff and sore. In fact, physically, she felt pretty darn lousy. But for some reason, her spirit felt much better.  
  
"That was embarrassing," Lina said to herself. "I can't believe I let Sylphiel see me break down like that."  
  
"You needed the emotional release, Lina Inverse," Pralahad said. "And her presence made it much easier for you to achieve that."  
  
Lina sat up, and groaned as her whole body protested the motion. A pain shot up her back and then back down. Then for good measure, her left leg fell asleep. "Ceiphied, I feel awful. How long was I out?"  
  
"Oh, six or seven hours, give or take a few minutes. Enough time to get a few hours of solid deep sleep." Pralahad crossed his legs. "Did your visitor make an appearance?"  
  
"No. That doesn't prove much, though. It's not like anyone could get a spell into here."  
  
"Almost true," the doctor admitted. "It would be possible, but I only know of a few people who could do it. And a few Mazoku. But at least this should give you some respite."  
  
"Yeah," Lina said. "Thanks, sensei. I haven't been sleeping very well recently."  
  
"I can imagine." The old man pinched his lower lip in thought. "Still, the real test will come when you leave. If your dreams are the result of a possession, you should now be exorcized. Although I'd imagine you wouldn't have come to me if that had been the problem." Lina shook her head. "Well, whoever is invading your dreams, they are more powerful and/or more skilled than you are with dreams. I'm afraid that you surpass me in this area, so there's little I can do to help. I can recommend you to an expert on the subject, however."  
  
"Oh? And who's that?"  
  
"Why, your sister, of course," Pralahad said. "She had all the markings of a prophet, you know. She knows more about dreams than any human alive at this time."  
  
Lina shuddered. "Anyone else?"  
  
"No, not really. There was some old sage I heard about one time, Raudy Gabriev or something. He was supposedly an expert on dreams, but I've never been able to contact him."  
  
"I've met him," Lina said. "He's dead now, I think."  
  
"Really? Well, that shouldn't be too much of a problem, I think."  
  
Lina looked at him oddly for a moment, then chuckled. "Sometimes I forget just what you can do, Sensei. It'll be a bit more difficult, though, 'cause he's actually in a different reality."  
  
"Really? That sounds like a diverting challenge."  
  
"Yeah. I helped him change the history of Mipross Island, so the Raudy Gabriev I met is gone, and he died more than a hundred years ago now."  
  
Pralahad stood up. "Well, Miss Inverse, I think it is time for you to rejoin your companions. I have a few things to tell all of you. After that, well, you are free to do as you please."  
  
"Do you mind if we stay here for a few days, Sensei?"  
  
The old man waved a hand dismissively. "No, of course not. Stay as long as you like. Time will not pass while you are here, as usual." There was a strange glimmer in the wizard's eye as he continued. "How shocked would your friends be to learn that you are much older than the seventeen years you've aged?"  
  
"I don't think Gourry would be all that surprised, to be honest," Lina replied. "He doesn't really think about things like that much. I don't think he's quite as dumb as he pretends to be, but he's not exactly bright. Sylphiel might be a bit surprised, but give her a couple days and she might figure it out. She's actually pretty intelligent, when she bothers to think instead of emote." Lina looked curiously at Pralahad. "How old am I, anyway?"  
  
"Oh, this is just a rough estimate, but I'd guess that you've spent a good four years in this tower, altogether. I'm not entirely sure. Yours was one of the shorter tutelages. Rezo was here for almost thirty. Your sister was here for twelve, which is probably about average."  
  
"Don't bring her into it," Lina muttered.  
  
"And what about the red-haired child?"  
  
"Him?" Lina asked, "What about him?"  
  
Pralahad frowned. "Do you think he would be surprised? That was the original question, I believe."  
  
"Ah. Don't really know. I've only known him for a few days. We picked him up a week or so ago. He was busy blowing up some bandits."  
  
"And what do you intend to do with him?" Pralahad asked. "Why did you bring him here?"  
  
Lina thought about it for a moment. "You know, that's a very good question." She frowned. "And I don't have an answer at the moment."  
  
* * * * *  
  
The sight that greeted Lina Inverse when she rejoined her companions struck her as rather amusing. She wasn't quite sure why, but she found it humorous, nonetheless.  
  
Sylphiel and Cyan lay slumped over on the floor, unconscious. Gourry sat cross-legged a short distance away, a piece of paper in front of him and a coin held in his hand as he examined it critically.  
  
"Hey, Lina, how you feeling?" Gourry asked offhandedly as she walked over to him and sat down. He tossed the coin up in the air and caught it, slapping it onto the back of his other hand. "Damn. Heads again."  
  
"Heads?"  
  
"Yeah. I must've flipped this coin five hundred times, and I keep getting heads, no matter what."  
  
Lina frowned at him. "You're sure it's not a two headed coin?"  
  
"C'mon, Lina, what do you think I am, stupid?" Gourry quickly rethought that comment. "Never mind. Dumb question. But anyway, I'm not that slow. I checked that after about ten in a row."  
  
"Really. Have you tried flipping any other coins?"  
  
"Yeah, a couple." Gourry pointed at four gold coins lying on the piece of paper before him. "This one always lands tails up, this one heads, heads again, and tails." He scratched his head. "I guess it's magic, or something, 'cause these look like pretty normal Gold Republicons."  
  
"Republicons?" Lina squealed with delight. "Those coins are priceless! The Republic died five hundred years ago! Do you have any idea how much those are worth?"  
  
"Um, no?"  
  
"Wait a minute," Lina said. "How do you know what a Gold Republicon looks like anyway? They're rare collector's items. Nobody uses them for currency anymore."  
  
"Really? Grandma had a chest full of all sorts of old things like that. She told me all kinds of stories about all the old junk she had, and how our family got all of it."  
  
Lina stared at him. "Your grandmother had a chest full of things from the Lost Republic? Do you have any idea how much things like that are worth?"  
  
Gourry scratched his head nervously. "Um, well, money never really meant much to me. As long as I have enough, I don't really worry about it."  
  
Lina sighed, her aggitation dissolving. There wasn't much point in being upset about it. Gourry didn't know what he'd done wrong, which was typical. However, in this case, he wasn't even being an idiot. He just didn't have a very good grasp on finances. Which reminded her...  
  
"Gourry, from now on, I'll carry the money."  
  
"Um, Lina, you already do."  
  
"Oh. Right." Stupid! Of course she carried the money. Like she'd trust it to him. Sure, she'd trust him with her life, but her money? Yeah right.  
  
"Anyway, back to the coins problem." Lina picked up one of the coins, and flipped it. It landed tails up. "And you said this one always landed heads?"  
  
"It did for me," Gourry protested.  
  
"Well, lets try again." She flipped the coin a few more times, but kept getting tails.  
  
"I think I get it."  
  
"Huh? Really?"  
  
"Yeah. It has to do with probability," Lina told him. "This place is sort of locked in time, so the same things keep on happening over and over. So the probability of your flipping a given coin heads or tails is fifty- fifty. But once you've flipped it once, the probability is set in stone, and you'll keep getting the same thing. But if I flip the coin, that counts as a separate event, so I might get a different result to begin with. But I'll keep getting that same result after the first flip. Get it?"  
  
Gourry hadn't. He'd fallen asleep instead.  
  
She bopped him lightly on the head. "Idiot! Don't you ever pay attention to what I say?"  
  
"Gee, Lina, I try, but you're just so boring."  
  
Lina hit him again, but with a little more force.  
  
"Okay, I'll shut up now."  
  
"Wise decision."  
  
A few minutes of silence passed.  
  
"Hey, Lina?"  
  
"I thought you were shutting up," Lina joked.  
  
"Changed my mind," Gourry said. "What's next?"  
  
"Hmm? What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean, we met your friend, so now we're gonna go on a quest or something, right?"  
  
Lina leaned back on her arms. "Yeah, we'll leave in a bit. We'll stay here a couple of days, though. I've got a few things to ask still, and I'm not in any big hurry."  
  
"Oh. Okay."  
  
Sylphiel started to snore softly.  
  
"Hmm. First time I've heard her do that," Lina commented.  
  
"Well, that's not a surprise."  
  
Lina bristled. She just knew there was an insult coming. The worst part was, she was fairly sure Gourry didn't even know he was insulting. "Really?"  
  
"Yeah. I mean, who could hear anything over your snoring?"  
  
Lina balled her fists, but somehow suppressed the urge to punch him. "Gourry?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Do you want me to hurt you?"  
  
"No." He looked at her in a way that said, what, you think I'm stupid?  
  
To which she gave a look that clearly answered, Well, duh!  
  
"Look, lets wake up these two and take them to the guest rooms. They'll probably sleep a lot better on beds, and be a lot less stiff in the morning."  
  
Gourry heartily agreed. "Yeah, a bed would be nice. But we don't have to wake them. I'll get Sylphiel, you get the kid."  
  
They picked up the happily sleeping duo, and Lina led them through a few doors to the guest rooms.  
  
"Go ahead and take that one," Lina said, pointing to a door. "Sylphiel can go in here, and I'll put Cyan in that room, there."  
  
"Hey, Lina, where will you sleep, then?"  
  
"I just slept. I'll be visiting the doc, so if you need anything, just knock on the door. We'll hear you."  
  
"Really? So you'll be just outside the door? I didn't see anything too interesting out there, just a hallway."  
  
Lina sighed. "Look, yogurt-for-brains, it's a magic door, okay? I'll hear you, trust me. It's a funny house that way."  
  
"Oh, okay," Gourry replied, accepting what she said at face value. "Well, good night, then, Lina."  
  
"Good night, Gourry. See you in the morning."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Lina walked off down the corridor while Gourry got Sylphiel settled in. By the time he made it back to the hallway, Lina was gone.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Xelloss was, for perhaps only the third time in his existence, concerned. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to be sure. It meant that he felt doubt in the powers he possessed, and also in the powers of his master. To feel such things was to invite dispersement, to risk having his component energies break apart and scatter across the universe. To doubt too much was to die.  
  
And yet, Xelloss doubted. There was no way he could not, in these circumstances, although he would need to doubt a great deal more before any serious harm would come to him. The Beastmasters plans were failing; for the third time, Zelas had guessed wrong.  
  
Zelas seldom guessed wrong. In truth, She seldom guessed at all. Eleven hundred years ago, when all the world was preparing for war, Zelas Metallium had turned Her keen insight upon the insignificant race of man. There, She had discovered an unexpected treasure: mathematics.  
  
Oh, it was true that the Mazoku and Ryuzoku both had knowledge of simple arithmetic. Such things were elementary to existence, perhaps innate, since Xelloss himself could never recall a time when he knew not how to add. Yet the humans had taken these simple truths and turned them into something more complex. They had learned how to apply numbers to things, and to then make predictions upon them.  
  
It was he himself who had reported on this, but he was not as intelligent as his master. She had seen a hidden potential: she realized that the actions of groups of intelligent beings could be predicted statistically. It had taken her four hundred years to perfect her mathematics, but in the end, she had it. She had a system of prognostication that was accurate. She had the SAFE.  
  
There was one significant problem with the Statistical Analysis of Future Events. It only gave probabilities, so there was always a chance, no matter how slight, that things might not go as planned. SAFE had predicted a 67.63 percent chance that Hellmaster Phibrizo's plans to destroy the world would fail: and they had. But there had been only a 0.16 percent chance that he himself would be destroyed. Yet that unlikely possibility had come to passs.  
  
Xelloss blamed Lina Inverse. She was a wildcard; she influenced the course of history far more than any mortal should. Twice now, she had been present at a massive deviation from the expected future, although the first time had been a more modest 12 percent (and the resurrection of Shabrinigdo would likely have failed in any case: 93 percent). Twice now, Lina Inverse had disrupted the Beastmaster's plans.  
  
If it were up to Xelloss, Lina Inverse would be dead. But it was not for him to decide: Zelas Metallium had given him clear instructions not to harm her, and he could not disobey. To do so would be to become nothing.  
  
So instead, Xelloss watched, and waited.  
  
"Xelloss." He turned and saw a grey-clad figure approaching.  
  
Ah. The old man of the tower. "Good evening, Master Pralahad," Xelloss said congenially. "You look the same as ever."  
  
"Come to try your luck again, Xelloss?" the old man growled. "I still have that arm of yours you so kindly donated on your last visit. Have you come to donate another?"  
  
Xelloss kept his habitual smirk firmly in place. He would not rise to the bait, as he had last time. The old man was not bluffing; he was capable, in this place, of destroying even a Mazoku lord, and possibly even a piece of Ruby Eye himself. But his power extended a mere twenty yards from tower in all directions, and Xelloss was a good six inches beyond that.  
  
"No, I'm afraid not. I was simply in the neighborhood, and thought I'd stop by. Lesser Mazoku are frightfully boring conversationalists, and occasionally I hunger for some real talk."  
  
"Pity," Pralahad remarked. "Ah well, probably for the best. You wouldn't believe how much trouble was to set up a containment field to keep that arm of yours corporeal. I see you've grown a new one."  
  
"I'm sure it's a simply fascinating application of magical engineering, but that's not really my forte," Xellos said. "I've always found statistics to be far more fascinating. And sadism, of course, but that really goes without saying."  
  
"But never masochism, unfortunately," the old man retorted. "Well, as I said before, just as well. It's probably too much trouble to preserve any more little bits and pieces of you." He shook his head. "I know about your use of statistical prophesy, and I know that history has just forked against you. If you are sniffing around for clues as to why, I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed. I'll not help you prefect the theory."  
  
"My good sir, there is nothing wrong with our SAFE method, I assure you. The unlikely simply occurs on occasion. Such is the nature of probability, or so I've observed."  
  
"It is either for that reason, or for Lina Inverse that you trouble me so."  
  
Xellos opened one eye. "Your powers of insight were ever keen, old one," he said ironically.  
  
"Well, get thee gone, creature of darkness. There is naught to be accomplished here." Pralahad traced a circle in mid-air with his left hand, and then pushed his right hand through it. There was a sudden surge of power, and Xelloss was pushed back from the astral wall around the old man's tower.  
  
"Do not tempt me, old man," Xelloss snarled. His control was slipping, he knew, but Xelloss simply could not contain his rage. "You and I both know that you can do no serious harm to me while I remain outside your barrier, and I can do no serious harm to you while you remain within. But I can make you very uncomfortable."  
  
Xelloss snapped his fingers, and focused his will on the air behind Pralahad's tower, drawing it toward himself. There was a sudden gust of typhoon class wind, and the old man stumbled forward. He fell, and as he did so, his hand passed beyond the barrier.  
  
Xelloss immediately pointed, and pushed his energy outward, toward the offending limb. The astral equivalent of lightning shot out from his finger, and struck the old man's hand. He was entirely surprised to see that absolutely nothing happened. In fact, where there should have been a blackened and burned arm, there was nothing. The old man's limb simply ended where it touched the shield.  
  
Xelloss forced himself to smile once more. He had been tricked, once again. "Clever, old one, very clever. I could not even sense that it was a projection."  
  
"Very good, isn't it?" the projection asked. Xelloss studied it carefully now, and wondered at it. The illusion actually had an emotional presence, and even a slight astral one. Truly amazing, what these humans could accomplish despite their lack of innate ability. "A student of mine came up with this method some two hundred years ago. It took me years to penetrate the illusion and duplicate the method myself."  
  
"I suppose I must concede this round to you, good doctor. That makes the score two to three in your favor, by my count. But I shall win the game."  
  
"We shall see." The projection turned away, and vanished.  
  
Xelloss gazed at the tower malevolently for a few microseconds, and then he too disappeared, leaving the night much the same as it had been before the interruptions.  
  
And those inside slept on, unaware of what had happened, with the exception of a certain redhead.  
  
==========  
  
End Chapter 3 


End file.
